Sweet Phobia
by Tha Kalligrapha
Summary: Daffy Duck seeks vengeance in this loose adaptation of Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" saga.
1. Sweet Phobia

_**Sweet Phobia**_

_Calligraphy by Tha Kalligrapha_

_Looney Tunes characters, names, and all related indicia are property of Warner Bros. Entertainment_

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_Chapter One: **Sweet Phobia**_

_One year ago . . . _

I was lying on a patch of carpet stained with my own blood as dry, ragged breaths escaped my dying lungs, abandoning their last-ditch efforts to keep me alive. Raspberry veins hemorrhaged their way across the off-white upholstery like blood-fused snakes slithering tactfully from my crumpled up body. So much blood . . . more than there should've been—dangerous amounts—trickling out like the remnants of a dammed waterfall.

Steam rose in dark, cloudlike plumes from the hot chunks of lead still stuck in my chest. The wounds felt as though they were only skin-deep, but that couldn't have been true. Not with my luck. They must've gone in deeper—hit a vein or two, ripped through an artery, shattered a bone, burnt up some skin . . . anything malignant.

My head swam like an Olympic medallist as I struggled to breathe, watching the sun set gently on the horizon through tear-stricken eyes. It was beautiful—a big orange ball sinking beneath the misty, pink swirls of swollen, cotton candy clouds right outside my window.

How dare they murder me here—in my own home. They're despicable, definitely despicable. Blessed with one more ounce of strength, I would've fought back. I would've wiped those tasteless smirks off their furry fucking faces and I would've taken them apart—ripped them limb from limb—until they were all dead and I was the only one left standing.

Sadly, it was a far-off dream.

I was stuck there, in a heap on the floor, paralyzed in pain and slowly bleeding to death—anxious and exasperated all at the same time. A tidal wave of emotion suddenly swelled up inside me and crashed down upon the shores of my fading brain—a lethal dose of sweet, sweet phobia buried somewhere in a bottle of gin.

It was times like these that I'd ask for a second chance—beg for it even. All I needed was one more try—another quarter in the machine and another shot at killing these motherfuckers. I hated them now—a burning grudge taking its first baby steps towards the foreshadowed chaos it would undoubtedly produce.

Friends today, enemies tomorrow. What the fuck was their problem? Did they want a piece of my spotlight—a free sample of my fame served with toothpicks and cheese cubes? Were they building their own little Cinderella stories in the background or were they just pissed, turning pale from all the time they spent living in my shadow? Fucking wannabes.

But even so, I had to admit, they knew what they were doing. They did me in and hung me out to dry . . . like I was nothing—a speck of dirt, a car to their truck, a jack to their queen—inferior in every way possible. They killed me without a second thought, or at least they tried to. It was the idea, the purpose, not the outcome, that mattered most. Death had swooped over me like the Grim Reaper's pet vulture. I could feel myself dying—losing control, falling apart at the seams. What was waiting for me on the other side? The afterlife? Eternity in paradise? Surely not anymore—not after all I've done since then.

I succumbed to every primal, evil, ugly emotion ever devised. I killed people—scores of people—without mercy, because I had nothing but contempt for their interests. I destroyed property, stole from civilians, disturbed the peace, and interrupted at least one national sporting event, but you know what? If it came down to it, I'd do it all over again.

By now, the entire house reeks of smoke. I couldn't tell if they'd started torching the place or not, but I was willing to bet they had. Either way, Bugs Bunny stood over me, grinning from ear-to-ear like a fucking circus freak.

"So whaddya' say, Daff?" He sneered, taking his sweet-ass time to load up the gun in his hand. "Didja' see it comin'?"

I could barely speak through the enormous, swollen gobs of blood in my mouth.

"Hmm?" He grunted. "What'sa' matta'? Cat gotcha' tongue?"

Keep joking, bitch, just keep joking.

"Well, I must admit," he continued, "I do feel a lil' slimy doin' 'dis to ya' . . ."

A little? A fucking _little?_

"But 'den I just remind myself," he took aim at my forehead, "it's your funeral, not mine."

They say when someone points a gun at you, your entire life flashes before your eyes—a garbled summary of your finest, shining moments. The funny thing is, all I ever saw was a bullet.

_End of Chapter One._


	2. The Rooster

_Chapter Two: **The Rooster**_

My taxi barreled down an empty desert road, its tires kicking up dust with each rotation and its exhaust pipes puffing out smoke like the ashy remains of an overstuffed cigar. The sun was slowly descending from its gleaming perch in the noontime sky, painting the clouds orange and pink with the fluidity of pastels and watercolors. Shadows stretched out beneath the towering cacti like elastic silhouettes from some noir gangster flick.

The cab slowed and its wheels turned as we pulled into the dirty driveway of a dilapidated 'convenience' store out in the middle of nowhere. Its roof was covered in sand with patches of red paint poking out here and there. The windows were filthy and streaked with fingerprints and the gas pump looked as though it would have sooner choked out a gallon of vomit than gasoline.

The car came to a rugged stop about twenty feet from the door and the driver turned to face me with a glimmer of excitement in his beady little eyes. His five o'clock shadow had grown into a scraggly beard and his teeth were brown enough to belong to an exhumed corpse. I smiled politely and tossed a huge wad of cash into the front seat, then stepped out onto the sun burnt pavement. The instant I closed the door behind me, he stomped on the accelerator and took off in the direction we'd come, leaving me there to literally eat his dust.

A bell tolled softly above my head as I plodded barefoot into Foghorn Leghorn's shop. Brainless country music poured from a slightly detuned radio hidden somewhere behind the counter. It wasn't long before the overgrown rooster himself emerged from the back room with his eyes shaded beneath the brim of a wrinkled cowboy hat.

"Howdy partner." He mumbled sleepily. "How can I help—"

And his eyes met mine and locked on and froze there, widening around the edges. He let his guard down and suddenly those big, black pupils were wide-open windows into his mind. I could peer in and watch the gears shift around and around and around like clockwork. All those memories came flooding back—a whole year ago, that one night—revenge, revenge, revenge—an explosion followed by a gunshot, then more gunshots, and more and more and more—blood on the floor, in the carpet, in the fibers—steaming hot lead, a beautiful sunset and clouds and clouds and clouds, and the moon and the stars in the sky—a smirk and a tear—everything came back at once and beat him unconscious like a baseball bat to the head.

For two or three minutes he stood there, frozen like a forgotten hand puppet—quiet and empty, his face expressionless. I snapped my fingers to wake him up and suddenly he rushed to attention as if an alarm had gone off in his head, quickly regaining his tough guy persona.

"Well I'll be damned." He said. "You finally made it."

"You've been expecting me?"

"Nope. I don't _expect_ anything." He sat down and lit a cigarette. "I _knew_ you were comin'."

"Are you sure? You seemed kinda surprised."

"Shit, everyone's been surprised at least once—I say—once in they life." He paused. "Even _you_. As a matter o' fact, you wouldn't even be here right now if we hadn't _surprised_ ya'."

I changed the subject:

"So is this where you work? Whatever happened to all that extra money you had layin' around? Please don't tell me you _live_ here."

He puffed his cigarette and his eyes began to wander, surveying his surroundings as if seeing them for the first time. The freezers in the back were empty save a single bag of ice, and just about every shelf was laced with dust. The cigarette cabinet, however, was still very much in tact, packed to the brim with everything from Kool to Marlboro. He looked at me, then at the floor, then at the ceiling, then at the floor again, and right back to me.

"Yeah, I live here." He said, calmly putting out his cigarette. "The money's gone. Lost it—all of it, everything. Guess I shoulda' listened to _you_, huh?"

"You guess right." I muttered. "But it's a little too late to change things, now isn't it? You see, we've got more in common than you think. _I _fucked up, _you_ fucked up. The only difference is, _I'm_ setting things straight, _you're_ not. You're just sitting on your ass, hoping it all comes back to you, and on _that_, you guessed wrong."

"Really?" He sneered. "'Cause I woulda' thought 'dat killin' everybody was a bit of a _simple minded _solution."

"Oh, learned something _new_, have we?"

He groaned with irritation, and then said with a frown. "Look, you don't haveta' believe me, but I'm not 'da same person I _was_. Now, I'm sorry if I caused you any trouble in the past, but like you said, it's a little too late—I say—late ta' change things."

"I won't argue with that, but keep in mind there's not a goddamn fucking thing you can say to get yourself out of this. No matter how many fucking times you apologize, you're still gonna die."

"You think I'm just gonna _let_ you kill me?"

"No, not at all." I reached for the two revolvers holstered to my waist and held them up for him to see. "In fact, I thought I'd give you a sportin' chance."

I laid one of the guns down on the counter and pushed it towards him with my fingertips. He looked at the gun, then back up at me and said with an unsure grin:

"You're really cookin' up a scheme here, aint'cha'?"

"Well, you know me, Foghorn. I was always the creative one."

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It wasn't long before we were standing out on the highway, back-to-back with the fading sunlight scorching our bodies. It was a good old-fashioned showdown—ten steps forward, twirl, and shoot, one bullet each. That was all we had, that was all we needed.

"One." He counted.

And we each took one step, the pavement burning into my webbed feet like blazing coals. It was steaming hot and irregular, like that first sip of coffee. You pull back, and recoil from the pain, but then you ease up and you realize that you'll have to get used to it . . . before everything else turns cold.

"Two."

The second step, the sequel to the first, the hardest one to make. At the beginning, everything's new and beautiful, but carrying that beauty onward is like carrying a terrible burden, one only fit for a giant to bear. And yet, I'd done it. It was behind me and it was behind him. We'd both committed, but only one of us would live to see the outcome.

"Three."

Pressing forward. Suddenly, I was doubtful, like I'd made a horrible mistake, one that slowly crept up on you. I was embarrassed, as if I'd made a fool of myself in front of a whole crowd of arrogant onlookers . . . just like I'd been doing for years.

"Four."

And those thoughts were out of my head as quickly as they came. Now I was anxious . . . overly anxious. Let's see, if this is the fourth step, then there's only six more to go, then after the next one, there'll only be five, then four, then three, then two, then one . . . and then what do I do? Pull the gun, throw it out, and—

"Five."

The blast echoed throughout the desert for miles and miles, establishing its place as the loudest gunshot in history. The bullet was like a freight train with monster's teeth, spitting saliva, gnashing and biting and aiming right at me, an unstoppable demon, escaping from hell on wings made of fire. And it hit me and it struck me and it knocked me down and I hovered in the air for a split second that seemed more like an eternity with my feet a few inches from the ground, until my body arced forward and I slammed, face first, onto the pavement.

It was just like before, but not quite.

_End of Chapter Two._


	3. Bitter Beginnings

_Chapter Three:** Bitter Beginnings**_

_Donald Duck is a registered trademark of the Walt Disney Corporation._

It would seem, if the world had retained any sort of logic, that the story should've ended right there, with me lying face-down on the pavement, and Foghorn Leghorn standing solemnly off in the distance, smiling into the fading echoes of his own gunshot. If things had happened as expected, without any twists or turns, the picture would've slowly faded to black and the credits would've begun to roll and the whole flick would've been over. But if you know me for who I truly am, then you should know that I'd survived death more than once, and if I had to, I could survive it again.

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_Several months earlier . . ._

My eyelids were heavy, as if they'd been anchored down somewhere by two or three huge invisible bricks. Getting them open proved to be a task in itself. Light flooded in like the waters of Nazareth and stabbed daggers into my pupils, dilated as they were, and finally, after a few seconds of pain, settled down in the back of my skull, throbbing rhythmically in the form of a migraine headache. My vision was blurred to shit—nothing but undefined blobs of color and shadow slumping over and falling on top of each other. I blinked a few times to sharpen the image, then a few more times, and a few more until each blob was clearly defined, and to the point where I could begin to see again.

As everything slid into focus, it became apparent that I was, in fact, not the only one in the room. Quite the contrary. Standing over me with his beak curled into a deceptive smirk that seemed to grow wider by the second, was Donald Duck. A bright light swelling up behind him seemed to highlight and amplify his presence. His light blue eyes stared into mine, glowing eerily, piercing into my head like an unmanned jackhammer. There was something strange about him, something surreal, something odd and out of place that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

"Feeling better?" He whispered, narrowing his eyes as if he already knew the answer.

I couldn't reply—I needed a few minutes . . . to figure things out, to put everything back in its place, to gather my scattered thoughts, and to figure out exactly what the fuck was going on, where I was, and how I got there. My eyes broke away from Donald's paralyzing stare and ran their course around the immediate area. The room was dimly lit, save for a few oddly placed floor lamps, and its colors altogether seemed to radiate with a cold, almost wet, blue sheen. I was lying in an awkwardly uncomfortable bed with a pillow that, sadly, seemed to have been made of duck feathers and, judging from the heart monitor beeping steadily at my side, it seemed safe to conclude that I'd been hospitalized.

"Know how long you've been here?" Donald continued, disregarding his first question. "A year. Well, _almost._ If you'd stayed out for about . . . " he looked at his watch, "two and a half more days, you would've cracked the one-year mark."

"Am I supposed to be proud of myself?" I hissed, trying to sound as menacing as I could with half my voice missing.

His smile faded and he took a step back, slipping out of view. Donald had always been somewhat of an anomaly. Way back in his early days, he'd hung out with Bugs and a few of the others on an almost semi-daily basis, despite his always-conflicting affiliation with Disney—an unwise business move if I'd ever seen one. As any well-rounded cartoon buff will tell you, Disney has always had a reputation for being notoriously nonviolent beyond a mischievous sense. Warner Bros., on the other hand, saw things differently. Through the influence of the ACME Organization, a multi-billion dollar prop company with questionable leadership, origins, and necessity, Warner began building an empire solely on the issue of cartoon violence, dropping C4 plastique explosives, dynamite, grenades, and double-barreled shotguns straight into the hands of the Looney Tunes. Naturally, it would seem odd for someone like Donald to hang around with _us._

Don't get me wrong, Donald may have been Disney's bitch, but what most people won't tell you is that, in his prime, he was also one of the most dangerous ducks on the planet. He liked to play with fire . . . literally . . . knives too.

But at this point, Donald was not the concern. Memories were flooding back to me, and with them came the faces of the five envious cocksuckers who'd put me there in that bed in the first place—members all of the same Looney Tunes crew that I'd once been a part of myself. Sylvester, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, Lola Bunny, and her estranged husband, the head honcho of the whole shebang, Bugs Bunny. They'd all pay their comeuppance . . . in time.

I slowly pulled myself up into a sitting position. My arms and legs were stiff and rigid, like four big, lifeless, wooden planks poking inertly from my body. I winced as my spine cracked, lifting some of the pressure off my aching bones.

"Better lose that attitude, Daff." Came Donald's slurred voice again, this time from the doorway. "It won't get us anywhere."

I watched him quizzically. He'd cracked the door open a few inches and was peeking out into the hallway, apparently making sure the coast was clear. Every now and then, he'd glance back over his shoulder for a second or two, as if he expected me to suddenly lash out and attack him.

"What do you mean, 'us'?" I asked suspiciously.

"Us . . . you and me." He answered, as if it were the dumbest question he'd ever heard.

"Why _us?_ What the fuck are you doing here?"

"What am I doing here?" He closed the door and turned to face me. "Shit, isn't it obvious? I'm breakin' you out!"

"Thanks, but I don't need any help."

"You might think so, but at the moment, you really don't have the right to form an opinion, now do you? Look, Bugs knows you're still alive. He's got assassins crawlin' all over the place just waitin' to pop out and put three or four in your back. So why don't you just settle down and let me take care of things, okay?"

"Assassins, huh? How do I know you're not one, then?"

He sighed heavily. "You're just gonna have to take my word for it."

I almost burst out laughing. "You're talkin' to the wrong motherfuckin' duck, Donnie. You, of all people, should know . . . I've taken words before, but you can rest assured I won't be takin' 'em again. No, sir! Those days are over."

Dressed in nothing more than a light green, thin fabric, hospital smock, I pushed back the bed sheets and threw my legs over the side, easing my webbed feet onto the ice-cold floor. I ran my fingers through my feathers, smoothing them out wherever they were ruffled as Donald watched in silence, clearly annoyed. He slowly shook his head as if to say, "It's a damn shame . . . " though not a word escaped his beak.

And as I stood there, hand-combing my feathers and eyeing Donald suspiciously, it seemed safe to say that the reality and the suddenness of my awakening and the events leading up to it hadn't quite sunk in yet. I knew what had happened and I knew that it was, indeed, a terrible thing, something I'd never be able to simply let go of, and yet, in a sense, it still seemed somehow unreal, like an impeccably vivid daydream I'd just snapped out of. It was there in the back of my mind, skulking around, ready and prepared to strike at the most opportune moment, but I could never seem to fathom it.

Suddenly, my attention was diverted. Pinned to a bulletin board on the wall behind Donald's impatient face and prying eyes was what appeared to be an X-ray—an X-ray of my head, no less. I pushed Donald to the side with the palm of my hand and took a step forward, frowning curiously. Bone showed up white and everything in between showed up black except for one big, gray streak that ran down the base of my forehead.

Donald approached me from behind and tapped me on the shoulder. I spun around to face him and as I did, he lifted two fingers and drummed them down the front of my skull, tracing the gray area pictured on the X-ray and producing a slight metallic clink as opposed to whatever sound we'd expected to hear.

"Yeah, there's definitely somethin' in there . . . " He said with a sigh. "Probably a lot more of 'em too."

I looked down at myself—at my body and at my hands, slowly beginning to understand. There was a metal plate in my head, surgically grafted to right the bone, right where I'd been shot. But then again, I'd been shot more than once—fifteen or sixteen times at the least, so there had to have been others. Donald was right.

"C'mon," he said, placing a hand on my shoulder, "forget about it. It's not that bad . . . it might even come in handy. But look, you'll have plenty of time to figure shit out later. Right now, we've gotta get outta here, okay?"

I was silent for a few more seconds, letting my thoughts run their course before I finally lifted my head and nodded in agreement. He patted me on the back and motioned towards the door with his thumb. As I'd seen him do just moments earlier, I pushed the door open a few inches and poked my beak out into the hallway, letting my eyes wander up and down the corridor. It was empty. I went to take a step back, to turn around and tell him, but before I could . . .

I crashed right through the door and slammed face-first into the opposite wall with a sickening 'thud.' By the time I'd spun around, Donald was lunging at me with a long, jagged knife gleaming in his hand, aiming straight for my throat. I slid to the side at the last second and watched as the blade embedded itself in the drywall. Donald's eyes went wide, allowing him to get a better view of my fist as it rammed into his skull. He stumbled a little further down the hall, shaking his head to lessen the pain. I reached for the knife he'd left stuck in the wall and pulled it back out with one solid tug.

"Hold on! Hold on! I can explain! I can explain!" Donald sputtered, clutching the side of his face and struggling to maintain his footing.

"Explain?" I retorted, tightening my grip on the knife. "You're a little beyond explanations here, Donnie. In fact, you're about a step away from makin' my list."

"Your—your list?"

"There's only five names on it at the moment, but I could make it six if you want."

"Wh—no, no, look . . . I admit—I'll admit it . . . " he stammered, "Bugs sent me to kill you."

"I figured as much. Although, it seemed a bit odd that you should just mindlessly follow all his orders."

"Well, I—I—I don't . . . but for three cars and a new house . . . "

"How did you know when I was gonna wake up?"

"I, uh . . . I didn't . . . that's just how it happened."

My eyes narrowed. "Oh, I see how it is. So, instead of facing me like a man, you were just gonna come in and kill me in my sleep, right? How fuckin' heroic."

"Wh—what are you saying?"

"I'm saying I want you to march your little white-feathered, fuck ass right back to that scum-sucking rabbit and tell him that it's over. I want you tell him that I'm coming and I want you tell him that I'm coming to kill him, okay?"

"Okay, yeah, sure." He said, just an octave above whispering.

And with that, I turned on my heel and began my long walk down the glowing, fluorescent, off-white, hospital hallway, headed, presumably towards the exit. Little did I know that it wasn't quite over yet.

"Oh, wait, Daff, just one more thing." Came Donald's voice again from behind me. "Take it easy."

I could picture it in my head even before it'd happened—another knife, a smaller one, speeding towards me with my back turned. I could picture it soaring through the air like the Grim Reaper's sickle and I could picture it piercing my flesh and taking me down, but what I couldn't picture was the knife simply clattering to the floor. No, Donald hadn't missed. In fact, he was dead-on with one hundred percent accuracy. Not only that, but he'd also furthered his point and proved himself totally correct. There was, indeed, more than one metal plate buried beneath my skin. How did I know? Because he'd found one, and he'd hit it.

With a half-determined, half-confused, all-angry expression smeared across my face, I slowly turned back around and met Donald's gaze for the last time. He was trembling, visibly terrified, yet awestruck at what seemed like an ongoing stroke of bad luck. Even worse was the fact that it didn't end there. The knife in my hand, the one that used to belong to him, somehow made its way from my fingers to his face, at which point it proceeded to bury itself between his eyes.

And that's all he wrote . . .

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_Back at the desert . . ._

It turns out Foghorn Leghorn and Donald Duck had a lot more in common than just a bunch of white feathers. They were both extraordinary marksmen with the ability to hit invisible bull's-eyes from a considerable distance. In a way, it was almost too perfect how everything worked out, but what can I say? That's how it happened, and that's how it always will be.

So there I was, lying facedown on the pavement, letting my mind wander all the way back to that empty hospital ward with Donald Duck and his blind treachery. It would seem that history had repeated itself. Foghorn was standing there, off in the distance, grinning like a maniac from ear-to-ear, slowly lowering the gun to his side, and chuckling stupidly.

A gust of wind rolled by and swept through my feathers, taking a few of them with it as it passed. They rose into the air like a barrage of obsidian arrows, and then fell back to Earth as if made of stone. My eyes slipped open and shoveled in a lovely view of the scalding hot pavement. I'd tried to ignore it up until then, but as the seconds ticked by, it began to grow more and more difficult to pay it no mind. The side of my face was starting to sizzle, trapping me in an unwanted and unwelcome test of endurance, like seeing how long you can hold your hand on the stovetop without screeching in pain.

Suddenly I could hear him approaching, his footsteps rippling through the tarmac as if it were made of liquid, sending a wave of chills slithering up my spine. I tried to play dead and tried not to move—to make sure I was still, hoping he didn't notice the steaming bullet lying just inches from my fingertips, right where it'd fallen.

Finally, after a minute or so, everything was silent. He'd stopped moving—stopped closing in on me. I held my breath.

"Y'know, Daff," he said, "ya' might've been creative, but you was never 'dat smart."

The blood boiled in my veins.

"Yer' 'bout as sharp as a bowlin' ball and half as bright . . . I mean, didja' _really_—I say—_really_ just expect me to play by yer' rules? This ain't a fuckin' cartoon, this is _real life_ and I intend to hang onto it. I know what happened to the last two 'dat crossed ya', so I took extra special care makin' sure it wasn't gon' happen ta' me."

He paused for a few seconds and wiped a bead of sweat from his brow.

"Shit . . . vultures'll have a hey-day t'night."

He giggled to himself at his own lackluster joke, then turned on his heel and began striding back towards the storefront, too arrogant to make sure I was dead, too stupid to spot the flattened bullet lying at my side, and too oblivious to notice my black-feathered hand slowly creep up and wrap itself around the handle of a nearly empty revolver. He didn't see it coming, he didn't hear it coming, he didn't smell it coming, and he didn't feel it coming . . .

Well . . . maybe he felt it.

Right when he'd least expected it, the back of his skull exploded in a misty cloud of gore, dousing me in red from head to toe, staining my clothes, and filling my mouth with that bittersweet, all too familiar taste. I spat it out the instant it crossed my tongue and wiped some more away from my eyes so I could watch with better clarity as the six-foot rooster tumbled to the ground, as dead as dead could be, another name scratched off the list.

_End of Chapter Three._


	4. Remembrance

_Chapter Four: **Remembrance**_

All ties were cut once I'd escaped the hospital. Freedom stood before me more boundless and epic than ever before. I felt like a dog off its leash. There was nothing left for me to pursue. Only my own personal goals remained. For the first time in my life, I was really truly by myself and on my own. I was free to roam, to do as I pleased, and to kill at will. Revenge is ugly, I won't deny it, but at the same time, it is never all for naught. There is always a reason behind it—a true and honest, wholly unavoidable reason, and in my case, it was simply to set things straight once more. 

However, before satisfaction could be mine, I needed to catch up with my adversaries, both literally and figuratively. In the time I'd spent comatose, an entire year had passed, and with it, most likely, had come a great deal of change. To know those changes would be to know my enemy, and to know my enemy would be to know my victory.

So, obviously, the most pertinent and immediate question would be, "how?" How would I bridge the gap between then and now and them and me? How would I learn their locations and who would tell me? Strangely enough, it was much simpler than I would've originally thought.

Pepé Le Pew was a poor little skunk, and the worst thing about it was that absolutely nobody knew. It turns out he was just as good at wooing the ladies as he was at keeping secrets, and in the end, it pissed all of us off. Sure, we knew he didn't make as much as we did (and by 'we' I mean the more popular 'toons), but we had no idea he was as bad off as he really was. Pepé was never a front man for the Looney Tunes, never a headliner. Instead, he was more like a really funny backup plan. When Bugs and I ran out of material, he'd toss in a bit of his own just to compensate. He was stuck at second billing rather than first and he never complained about it.

Soon enough, however, it became apparent that he wasn't doing nearly as well as he'd hoped. I never could quite understand just _how_ he squandered away each and every one of his paychecks, but his insistence on living an overly glamorous lifestyle may have had something to do with it. Expensive cars and jewelry were apparently two of his passions.

So then, as we were catching up one day after a late night of shooting, he revealed to me exactly how he would make ends meet. Suffice it to say I was a little surprised, for his scheme was not to work double overtime or to get his name out there in the movies, but instead to open up a celebrity sports bar on the corner of Kingsley and Hollywood in Los Angeles that he so creatively referred to as, "Pepé's Pub."

It seemed to me that he couldn't have been telling the truth, that someone must've been moving his lips for him. There was no way someone like Pepé could do something as backwards as that. For the longest time, I thought it was all just a joke, but sure enough, a few months later he'd hired some contractors and snatched up the plot all on his own money. Soon afterwards, Pepé's Pub was up and running.

Being that he ran such a place, Pepé turned into quite the gossip machine in no time. Most of his customers had something to say, and he seemed to like knowing everything that went down and came up around the city. He kept his ear to the streets and, therefore, would be my best bet when it came to sorting things out. Thus, my first stop was none other than Pepé's Pub.

When I arrived, just a few minutes before closing time, he led me inside, sat me down at the bar, and poured me a nice, tall glass of champagne. The lights were dimmed and the place was vacant. For the time being, it was just the two of us.

"So tell me," Pepé began in his usual thick, French accent, "where have you been all 'zis time?"

I could've cringed. "You mean . . . you don't know?"

He shook his head. "Nobody does."

"Nobody? Well, what _do_ you know?"

"I know your house burned down and . . . 'zat's about it."

It was puzzling, no doubt. It seemed all the papers and TV news stations had kept their noses strictly out of my business—a first if there ever was one. Apparently, something else had gone down. After all, when have reporters _ever_ been known to keep their mouths shut about something as big as a celebrity's house burning to the ground? It was odd, undeniably odd.

"Yeah, that's part of it." I assured him.

"So . . . what about 'ze rest of it?"

I took a swig of champagne and let it burn in my mouth for a second before I swallowed. "The rest of it? Well, I kinda' wish I knew a little more myself, but I'll tell ya' . . . there's _definitely _other forces at work here."

"What do you mean?"

I leaned in a bit closer, setting my elbows down on the counter. "I mean it seems to me that someone made sure _you_ and everyone else were kept in the dark about this. _Someone_ must've gone off and shut the media's mouth for 'em, right?"

"What? What are you talking about? Who?"

"The same people that burned down my house."

_

* * *

_

_A year earlier . . ._

The water sparked orange like an ocean of fire beneath the slowly setting sun as waves rolled in upon the sand and slipped back into the sea without a sound. The clouds were pink and misty and they sloshed around in the sky like drips of paint running down an empty canvas. And there I sat under the palm trees in a short-legged director's chair with my ear glued to a cell phone, not even pretending to pay attention to the dazzling scene that lay before me. I suppose it wouldn't have mattered anyway. After all, it _was_ my private beach, and there _was_ a lot on my mind at the time.

It was my agent on the phone, a tall guy with slicked-back hair who always wore suits and carried a briefcase. In other words, the cliché businessman. He had lots of clients and always told me I was his favorite, but I had no doubt he said that to everyone just the same.

"Listen," he said through the phone, "do you have any idea how much publicity this thing is gonna get? You'll be fucking ruined!"

"How do you know they won't take my side?" I responded stubbornly.

"Because," he groaned, "nobody likes you, Daff. Nobody. I don't give a fuck what you think about yourself, 'cause the truth is, it's all bullshit."

"No, you've got it twisted." I told him. "People like me, they just don't like the character I play."

"Whatever," he said, still sounding unconvinced, "the point is, you can't sue ACME around here and expect any sympathy."

"Why not?"

"Do you know how big ACME is? It's gigantic. It's the largest prop company in the entire world, and _you_ want to slap a suit on them in Los Angeles? In Hollywood?"

"I don't care what other people think. The point is and always has been that _they_ caused me great injury and discomfort through the manufacture of faulty prop items and stage products, and _that's_ why I'm suing them."

He sighed loudly from the other line. "What are you reading right from the press statements or something?"

"No." I was.

"See, this is exactly what I'm saying. No one can tell you you're wrong. You just won't accept it. Do me a favor and think this through a little more before you go off and do anything stupid. This is a wrong move for you and I think you know why just as much as I do."

"Okay, okay," I finally agreed, "I'll think about it."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Have a wonderful evening."

"I will."

"Goodbye."

"Same to you."

I hung up the phone feeling more agitated than I had in a long time. After all, who was this nameless nobody to tell me what to do and what not to do and who liked me and who didn't? He didn't know what he was talking about. I did. And from that point on, _I_ was the only one I could trust.

Luckily, that kind of mentality never got the chance to sink in.

I regret now that I was so blinded by my own towering, troublesome ego that I was, literally, unable to think straight. Things were required to go _my_ way because _I_ was the most important, and it never ceased to amaze me how others repeatedly failed to see that. If there's one thing this whole incident brought about that I'm actually thankful for, it's that it finally cleared my head and shrunk it back down to a more manageable size.

A cold wind blew past me and I slipped the cell phone into my pocket. Night would fall soon and I needed plenty of rest to motivate me in the day to come, but surely not before I channel-surfed for at least an hour-and-a-half. I lived alone, so the TV was, inevitably, the only consistent company I had. Trotting away through the sand and headed off towards my own multi-million dollar beach house, I let my eyes wander into the shady forest of palm trees that backed the coastline. It seemed darker than usual. Perhaps it was just the foreshadow at work.

Everything that happened next was at a pace so sudden and so quick I could barely follow it myself. I walked in through the door and pulled it shut behind me, then wiped my shoes off on the floor mat, stepped down into the sunken living room, and collapsed onto the couch with an exhausted sigh. After a few wasted seconds, which I spent staring blankly at the walls, my hand reached for the TV remote, but was stopped by the ringing of the doorbell.

_Ding-dong._ It went. _Ding-dong._

Naturally, my first impulse was to go to the door and open it . . . so I did. Little did I know it would be the greatest mistake I'd ever made in my entire life, for it was then that the door exploded.

My neck snapped up towards the ceiling as my body was propelled backwards through the house, slipping through the air like a renegade cruise missile. I landed heavily atop the glass coffee table that stood just a few feet from the TV, smashing it to bits beneath my weight. Shards went everywhere—into my neck, my arms, my legs, the back of my head, everywhere, and blood shot out like a geyser from each new wound, drenching the carpet and staining it crimson.

For a few moments, I was completely stunned. I couldn't move, I couldn't react, I couldn't do anything. It was as if my limbs had suddenly decided to stop cooperating with me. And then, without warning, my mind began to race—very involved and very intrigued very quickly. I backtracked just a few seconds to that one snapshot, that one, big 'family photo' of all my newfound enemies standing together for the first time just before I went rocketing across the room.

There were five of them, and I knew all of their names.

My ears were ringing as I rose to my feet, so all was silent as they opened fire with the assault rifles cradled in their arms.

_

* * *

_

Pepé bit his lip.

"So . . . _'zat's_ what happened." It was a statement, not a question.

I nodded.

"And . . . you want to do some'zing about it."

Again, I nodded.

"I guess 'ze only question now is . . . what're you gonna do?"

"I'm gonna kill them." I growled. "Them and anyone who stands in my way."

For a long time after that, Pepé just stared at me silently, as if he was trying to see into my head, but couldn't quite pull it off. Finally, though, after a minute or two, he took a big sip of champagne and said:

"I can help you."

"With what?"

"A lot of things, just hear me out." He took another sip before continuing. "Listen, Sylvester's staying at 'ze _Lucky Pussy_ night club on 'ze other side of town."

"Same place he's always at."

"Word has it he's still got close ties with Bugs. He should know where 'ze rest of your, uh . . . your . . . _people_ are."

I was confused. "Well, I was just gonna go into Warner Bros. tomorrow morning and—"

"Warner Bros. went out of business eight months ago."

My heart skipped a beat. "What? Out of business? How?"

"ACME." He said. "ACME drove 'em right into 'ze gutter."

ACME. The name stuck in my head like a nail and my stomach dropped like a stone.

"So . . . " I sputtered, "You and . . . you . . . "

"Everyone went 'zeir separate ways. 'Zere's no telling where 'zey all are now."

Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise. Warner Bros. was gone and washed away with the tide, and with it went every last bit of my former life. Not only that, but my enemies were scattered and unorganized just the same, making it all the more simple to sneak in for the kill.

Pepé allowed me to stay at his bar that night. There was an extra room in the back with a bed and some clean clothes to wear. He left around midnight and shut off all the lights, as if I couldn't have done it myself.

And that was the last time I ever saw him.

_End of Chapter Four._


	5. The Cat

_Chapter Five: **The Cat**_

_Late that evening . . ._

_The Lucky Pussy nightclub, Los Angeles, California_

Sylvester sat with his legs crossed, wrapped in a fur coat as two young, impressionable, female felines, bathed in neon light, stroked their nimble fingers up and down his chin and around his ears, purring like housecats. Behind them stood a great glass window that looked out upon the dance floor far, far below where dozens of drugged up bodies were still moving and shaking their limbs to the same beat they'd been playing all night. Opposite the cat and basked in shadows, sat a certain special rabbit whose ghostly, egg white eyes were all that seemed to shine through the darkness. A thin curl of smoke rose from the tip of his cigar and slowly evaporated into thin air as it drifted up towards the ceiling.

"Do ya' know why I'm here?" He asked in between puffs.

"No, Bugs, I don't." Sylvester replied as one of his girls reached down to rub his chest.

"Ya' mean ya' don't even have a clue?"

"Well, I haven't spoken to ya' in months, so why should I?"

"Just think for a second, will ya?" Bugs paused and leaned forward. "_Why_ haven't we spoken in months? Why?"

Sylvester blinked his eyes quizzically. "Warner went outta' business."

Bugs shook his head. "Nope. 'Dat ain't it. Good guess, though." He licked his lips. "You remember the . . . unpleasantness, don't ya'?"

Sylvester hesitated. "Ya' mean . . . Daffy?"

Bugs snapped his fingers and fell back into his chair. "Yep. Dat's it. Daffy. Right on 'da money."

"What about him?"

Bugs took a deep breath. "Ya' remember when we first found out he wasn't actually dead?"

"Yeah."

"And you remember when I promised to kill him if he ever came outta' his coma?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I sent someone in ta' finish da' job and, uh . . . "

"Yeah?"

"Turns out he got 'dere a little too late, if ya' know what I mean."

Sylvester froze. "Ya' mean . . . he's awake?"

Bugs nodded. "Yeah. He is. In fact, I think he might be comin' ta' settle 'da score."

"Settle the score?" Sylvester bit his lip, and for a long time it was quiet. Eventually, though, his eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed in a fit of laughter. Unsurprisingly, his girls joined in right along with him.

Bugs grimaced. "What's so funny?"

"You think—" Sylvester choked out between giggles, "you think I give a fuck about that whiney piece o' shit?" He slapped his knee, still cackling stupidly. "C'mon, Bugs! How many times have we fucked him over? Do ya' honestly think we can't do it again? Shit, I ain't afraid."

Bugs sighed and rose to his feet. "If I were you, I would be."

"Why?" Sylvester frowned, unconvinced. "Why in all hell should I be afraid of Daffy fucking Duck?"

"'Cause you don't know him like I do."

* * *

I woke up early the next morning with sweat pouring down my face. I wasn't sure if I'd had a nightmare I couldn't remember or if the room was simply too hot, but either way, my feathers were soaking wet. I dragged a hand down my forehead and over my eyes and slowly brought myself back into the waking world. My mouth was dry and my head was throbbing, but I'd slept well nonetheless. I wasn't sure why. I'd been out cold for a whole entire year. It seemed like I should've been able to go at least a day or two without any sleep at all and still be just fine. I guess rest doesn't accumulate.

Sunlight slid in at an angle through the dusty, cobweb-covered window at the foot of my bed. The whole room glowed with a gentle sort of bluish-white sheen that seemed to bounce off the stony, rock-hard walls and chase away the shadows. I pulled myself out from under the covers and trudged over to the window and opened it. A cool blast of fresh air swept into the room and wrapped itself around me like a blanket of ice. Outside, birds were chirping from their pencil-thin perches at the tips of an aging oak tree. Real birds, not 'toons. Staring at them, I started to think how lucky I was to be a 'toon myself rather than one of them. It was the first time I'd felt like that in a long while. Sure, I was a duck—a bird just like them—but at the same time I was more human than they could ever be. So much, in fact, that I was actually accepted into modern society.

But still, it wasn't all sugarcoated. It's my personal belief that everyone who's ever lived has, at least once, looked at an animal—be it a bird, a snake, a dog, or a cat—and wondered to themselves what it would be like to spend just a day as one of them—an animal, a creature without a culture, sinless and built on instinct. Wouldn't it be great? Wouldn't you love to escape your own life and to leave all your problems behind you? Everyone would always trust you and you'd never be ridiculed for anything ever again. Wouldn't you love that? Wouldn't it be wonderful to strive for a single purpose and to forget about all the rules everyone's put in your way?

Wouldn't that be great?

I closed the window. My mind was wandering, fluttering away from the task at hand. If I wanted to be free like the birds, I'd have to finish what was in front of me first. After all, you can't spread your wings until you've shifted the weight off your shoulders. I slid open the closet door and flipped on the light inside. It was completely empty save a single clothes hanger wrapped in dry-cleaning plastic. Dangling from it were the clothes Pepé had left for me. Somehow, they weren't quite what I'd expected: an all-white button-up with matching white pants, and whoever had worn it last was certainly much taller than I was. The pants bunched up around my ankles and rode up under my heels every time I took a step. As far as an outfit went, it was impossibly simple, but in this case, it was pretty damn cool. There was some sort of symbolism to it—a black duck dressed in all white, bright and innocent, ready to kill. No doubt it would get dirtier as I went along. As would I.

And so, at that moment, the adventure had truly begun. I was ready. I was set. It was fucking game time.

* * *

Everyone had always thought Sylvester and Felix were somehow related. The two of them, however, explicitly denied any connection. Nevertheless, I'd always wondered why they were so quick to condemn it. Did they embarrass each other or was it simply a division between boss and employee? Felix, you see, was one of Sylvester's most trusted bodyguards. He and Woody—that's Woody Woodpecker—were hired for one reason and one reason only: to kill anyone who stood in Sylvester's way. In their prime, they were both two of the most well known mischief-makers to ever grace the TV screen, and combined, they were more dangerous than you could possibly imagine.

Thus, I kept them in mind as I entered through the spinning, plate-glass doors of the famed _Lucky Pussy_ nightclub. I went completely unarmed because, at this point, confidence was my greatest weapon, and I had plenty of it. In fact, I was brimming and boiling over with it. I had so much confidence I could pour it out and pass it around. For, at that moment, there was only one singular purpose in my life, and that was to kill Sylvester. He was number one on my list—the first step to a glamorous staircase of bloody revenge.

The bouncers let me in without saying a word. They must've known I was coming. The dance floor was, as it always had been, a hulking, heaving mass of sweaty, gyrating bodies all locked together in close-quarters, choking down ecstasy and whipping their limbs all about as the bass beat rumbled through the walls and the DJ screeched out commands from his perch high above the bar, soaked in pink neon light. I pushed my way past three or four topless girls who all reached out to shove their slimy, discolored tongues in my mouth and start up another raging sex orgy. Seeing I wasn't into it, they decided instead to go jump on a different guy and let me pass. The lights ran by overhead and leapt right in my eyes as if they'd been aiming at me all along, but as soon as they passed, I spotted Felix standing off in the distance, holding the wall. The only bad thing was, he'd spotted me too.

* * *

Up in his private box, Sylvester was having a damn good time. The two girls he'd had no more than a few hours prior had, as the day went on, multiplied into five girls, and they were all hanging off his every move.

"Y'know what I like about you girls?" He asked aloud. "You never seem to talk back . . . and . . . to me, that's a good quality in a woman, y'know? The silent type."

One of them, a silvery-gray cat with slicked back ears and invisible whiskers leaned over into his ear and whispered: "Of course, baby. We'd never do that."

Sylvester chuckled to himself. "See? That's _exactly_ what I'm talkin' about!"

Sadly, all good things invariably come to an end, and this incredibly noble experience was no exception. Just as Sylvester had opened up his mouth to spout more pitifully sweet nothings, the phone on the table across the room burst into life with an ear-splitting ring that effectively silenced the whole place in heartbeat. A few seconds passed and it rang again. Sylvester bit his lip.

"Go get that and see who it is, would ya'?" He requested of anyone who was willing to listen.

A thin girl with brownish fur, wrapped in a towel from the chest down swaggered over to the phone and gazed down at the Caller ID. "It's Felix." She called out. "You want me to pick it up?"

"No, just give it to me." Sylvester ordered. Too late, she'd already answered it.

"Hi, Felix."

"Who is this?" Came his voice on the other line, drowned out by the pounding rave music from downstairs.

"What? I can't hear you!" She shrieked.

"Put Sylvester on the phone!" Felix shouted, raising his voice.

Obeying, she turned to her pimp and said: "He wants to talk to you."

"Okay . . . " Sylvester droned, dumbfounded. "Can you gimme' the phone then?"

"Oh yeah, sorry." She tossed it across the room, but so poorly that he nearly dropped it.

Glaring at her, he held the phone to his ear and growled: "Hello?"

"Hey, boss," Felix said, his voice going hoarse, "There's someone down here and, uh . . . I think he wants to speak to ya'!"

"Who?"

"Just look out the window. You'll see. You can't miss him."

Slightly irritated, Sylvester got to his feet and plodded over to the glass. Looking out on the dance floor, his eyes naturally went straight to the duck dressed in all white. He sighed heavily. "Is that who I think it is?"

"Yep." Felix confirmed. "It's Daffy alright. What do you want us to do?"

Sylvester turned away from the window and began to pace around the room. "Listen, you don't let him get to phase motherfuckin' one, you understand me? Take him in the back and kill him and don't call me back until you've got his head on a fuckin' platter!"

_Click._

_

* * *

_

Somewhere along the way, I'd lost sight of Felix, which I knew was definitely not a good thing. I was open to a surprise attack, and that was easily the last thing I wanted to be open to. They knew I was there, and they knew what I wanted, and they weren't about to let it happen.

Nevertheless, there was still no room for compromise, and I continued to squirm my way through the wriggling crowd, paying no mind to the drooling, high-as-a-kite, dope fiends surrounding me on all sides. Eventually, I reached the center of the floor and paused to look around. The blinding purple lights were still sweeping around and around overhead, as if their intention was to make everyone as dizzy as they possibly could, and the DJ, rummaging around in a brown, burlap bag, seemed to be running low on pounding, bass-heavy records to play.

A tap on the shoulder sent me whirling around on my heels. There, behind me, standing not three inches away, was Woody Woodpecker, and he definitely wasn't smiling. His feathers were all combed and cut rather sharply, so his face looked almost unreal. Adding to that was the heavily over-starched, though undeniably classy tuxedo he wore, and the red scarf wrapped snugly around his neck.

"The boss tells me you've got some unfinished business to take care of." He wasn't yelling, but I could hear him just as if he were.

"Yes, I believe I'm aware of such things."

Woody cocked an eyebrow. "Follow me. I'll take you to him."

I agreed, though I knew I shouldn't have. All the confidence had run to my head, thus making me quite a bit overconfident. But at this point, even my own stupid mistakes weren't enough to do me in. If Woody tried to pull anything funny, he'd be struck down just like Donald was. There was no stopping me now.

I followed the navy blue woodpecker through the rest of the crowd, which he seemed to part with ease, and through a small, black door marked "authorized personnel only," that led down a dark, painfully narrow hallway made mostly of cement. We rounded a corner, strolled down another hall, took a left, then a right, and finally stopped in front of a plain-looking door with a golden, though visibly worn knob.

"After you." He said, motioning with his hand.

The ambush was coming. I could feel it, and I was ready for it. Or so I thought. I eyed Woody suspiciously, but did as he told and slowly turned the doorknob. It swung open like a coffin, revealing nothing but the darkness inside. I paused for a moment, listening carefully for any telltale rumblings. There were none, so I clenched my fists and stepped through the threshold.

Woody didn't follow immediately. He stood back and watched as all the lights flickered on at once. The first thing I noticed was that all the walls were made to be completely anechoic. They were jagged and spiky and cast weird shadows all over the place. It was a soundproof room no doubt. Secondly, I found that the wall opposite myself had been fitted with a massive, widespread mirror that spanned the entire length of the room, and was most likely used as a window on the other side. Thirdly, and perhaps most unfortunately, I noticed Felix standing behind me with a lead pipe gripped firmly in both hands.

I didn't even feel it when it first smashed into the back of my head. Instead, I just went down—straight down, without a grunt, without a moan, without a yelp. It didn't hurt, it only knocked me senseless. The pain would set in later, and when it did, it would certainly be the closest thing to blinding. Everything went black, and when my senses returned, they were all on fire, back just in time to catch the pipe slamming down against my spine like a sledge hammer. I slid into a heap on the floor, my entire body burning and ringing and spinning like some kind of sick carnival ride. Blood rushed up in my beak and drooled out on the ground.

Felix and Woody were circling around me. I could see their feet pacing by in front of me.

"You know what today is, Daff?" Woody said, as if he were scolding me. "It's Friday, and Friday is a special day around here, especially for the boss, and he doesn't like it when pricks like you come waltzing in, trying to fuck up his whole day."

Feeling just a bit of my strength come back, I pulled myself up on all fours, breathing heavily, with sweat spilling down my face. "Does he . . . make you . . . call him that?"

I felt the sting of Woody's shoe as it rammed into my face and knocked me on my back. Felix dropped the pipe and let it clatter noisily to the floor, apparently going to pick up something that would inflict even more pain than before. I glanced over at him. He was knelt over a small pile of potential weapons, sifting through it, trying to find one best suited for the situation. From what I could see, there was a two-by-four, a thick, rusty chain, a blunt hatchet, a syringe swimming with green shit, an industrial-strength rope, a pair of handcuffs, and last but certainly not least, a handgun.

"No, he doesn't _make_ me call him 'boss,'" Woody said, dangerously, "but I call him that anyway, because, after all, he _is_ my boss, isn't he? It seems like a respectful title, don't you think?" He caught my eyes wandering over to the stack of weapons. "Like what you see?"

Again, I pulled myself back up onto my knees.

"Boy, you just don't quit, do you?" He turned to his accomplice. "Felix, give me one of those chains."

Felix did as he was told and tossed the rusty old thing across the room. Woody caught it in one hand and slowly circled around me once more. My blood was just starting to pump. The adrenaline was ripping through my veins and my heart was banging against my chest. I knew what was coming next.

Woody wrapped the chain around my neck and pulled me to my feet. I didn't struggle. I didn't have to. He pulled tight, and the metal bit into my skin. I took a deep breath. My eyes were burning like a campfire as the rage settled in. I watched as Felix grabbed the two-by-four from off the ground and started towards me. Four or five nails had already been driven through it and were now poking out like spears. My fingers dug into the chain. Woody pulled harder. Felix took a step and brought the board back behind his head. My throat went dry. My muscles flexed, alive once more after a year spent comatose. The board went back even farther, and then it swung.

Without warning and in one graceful motion, I tore the chain from Woody's grip and threw myself back down on the floor. There was a crack and a split and thousands of tiny pieces of wood fell everywhere, followed closely by a shower of blood that, for once, wasn't my own. I looked up just in time to see Woody standing there, motionless, frozen. The nails were stuck in his head, jammed right through his skull. I could almost feel the pain myself. His eyes were blank and, for a second, it looked as if he were going to say something, but then his knees buckled and he slumped to the floor, dead.

Felix still wasn't quite sure of what'd just happened, or of what he'd just done. His face was a mixture of shock, fear, and confusion—perhaps his own special brew of sweet phobia. But before he could regain his senses, I tackled him from below, taking his legs right out from under him. My hands balled into fists and, one-by-one, pounded into his face over and over until the white fur around his nose boiled into a deep red. I reared back for another strike when he held his hands up in defense.

"Stop! Please!" The tears came streaming down. "Don't kill me! Please!"

I watched him for a moment and the adrenaline slowly began to subside, although I was still trembling. "Why?" I growled.

"B—because," he stammered, "I—I can take you to him—Sylvester—for real this time!"

The gears spun around in my head and my eyes darted over to the pile of weapons lying just five feet away. I climbed off of Felix and plodded over to them, picking up the handgun before even considering any of the others. I checked the clip. It was loaded.

Felix was beginning to pull himself together, watching me cautiously. "Wh—what're you gonna do with that?"

"Don't worry about it." I muttered. "Just take me to Sylvester, and you'll find out."

* * *

Strangely obedient for a cartoon cat, Felix led me straight to Sylvester's private box. The door was painted purple, much like that of the rest of the club, and marked with curly gold letters that spelled out, very simply, "Sly."

Felix was sniffling loudly, trying to stop his nose from bleeding. I looked him in the eye and raised the gun up just a hair.

"You first." I told him.

He blinked a few times, sniffed, and reached for the doorknob, his fingers still shaking. When the door swung open, I could see Sylvester sitting there on the opposite side of the room, surrounded with whores, toasting wine glasses, laughing it up. Just another day in fucking paradise. He looked up as we entered in through the doorway and didn't even flinch when I wrapped an arm around Felix's throat and jammed the gun in his ear.

"Weren't you the one that was always going on and on about how important your friends are to you?" I asked, rhetorically.

"What's your point?" He smirked.

"You already lost one. You wanna make it two?"

There was a pause as the cat repositioned himself in his seat, looking utterly unimpressed at all the trouble surrounding him. He took a sip of wine. "What happened to ya', Daff? You used to be such a cunning little bastard, and now look at ya'—runnin' all over the place without even stoppin' to think. Where, oh where, has the old Daffy gone?" He sneered, chuckling to himself.

"He's dead." I murmured. "He's long dead. You remember, don't you? You killed him."

He took a sip of wine. "I did, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did."

"And you're here . . . to do what? Exact vengeance? Some crazy Tae Kwon Do shit? Put a few holes in me? What?" He paused for a second and giggled to himself. "Sounds like a pretty big goal to me."

I nodded.

"Well," he taunted, "why don't you go ahead and get it over with then?"

"It's never that easy, Sly." I pushed Felix to the side and aimed the gun at Sylvester instead. "Since you don't seem to care much for your friends, maybe you'll care a little more for yourself."

The gun went off and blew a hole in his shoulder.

Sylvester yelped and clenched his teeth in agony. "Why you little cocksucker!" He barked. "What the fuck was that for?"

"You just told me to kill you, didn't you? I'm just doing what you told me. You're on death row right now. Shouldn't be too surprising."

Sylvester shook his head. "You can't kill me, you fuckin' piece of shit. What, you think you're so fuckin' special 'cause you can waltz right in here like you fuckin' own the place? I run into shit like you everyday. Jealous trash, that's all you are. You wanna be where I be. You wanna fuck the girls I fuck. Don'tcha'?"

I shook my head. "No. You don't understand me, Sylvester. I'm not jealous, I'm just angry. And to appease that anger, I'm gonna ask you some questions and you're gonna answer them, okay?"

"Fuck you!"

A second bullet found its way into his thigh. Everyone in the room jumped back.

"Jesus!" A huge glob of spit flew leapt from his tongue. "Christ!"

"Hurts, doesn't it? I was aiming for your knee cap, but I guess I'm a little off today."

"Fuck!" His voice was going hoarse. "Fine! I'll tell you what you want, just . . . don't . . . shoot!"

"Now you know I can't guarantee something like that."

"Then I'm not tellin' you shit!"

"No, Sylvester," I reassured him, "I think you will. Because, if you don't, I'll be forced to make your last living moments here on Earth the most agonizing ones you've ever been through."

Shaking like a tambourine, he sat there in silence for a few seconds, breathing heavily, his eyes darting around the room, glancing at all the fearful faces around him. Felix had passed out on the floor from blood loss, and all the girls were watching me intently.

"What's it gonna be, Sly?"

"Just tell him, baby!" One of the girls screeched, tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Well, I guess I don't have much of a choice do I?"

"Wise words." I muttered. "Now let's get down to business." I edged closer to him. "First and foremost, I'd like to know why you and all your little friends decided to do this to me? Why'd you ever gun me down in the first place? I mean, I know we weren't great friends or anything, but we were, at least, somewhat acquainted. So why'd you do it?"

His eyes lit up and he cracked a smile. "Bugs talked me into it. Said he was takin' over Warner Bros. pretty soon and he'd be payin' our salaries."

"Looks like he was lying, doesn't it?"

"Looks like it, but I don't think he was. He never told you, did he?"

"Told me what?"

"He's been CEO over at ACME for the last ten years."

I did a double take. "What?"

"I guess he only tells his _closest_ friends that kinda shit."

"CEO at ACME?" I was still dumbfounded. It seemed almost impossible that I couldn't have known such a thing, but then again, the business world can be awful secretive when it wants to be.

"Yeah." Sylvester continued. "And you remember what you were doin' back then, don't ya'?"

"Suing them." It was all clearing up so suddenly.

"Makes sense now, doesn't it?" He said. "Bugs didn't want you to ruin his company. He did what he had to do, and so did I, and so did everyone else. You were a problem, so we had to solve you one way or another."

"Seems to me like there could've been an easier way."

"Of course there was an easier way!" He snapped. "There's an easier way to get revenge, too, but that's not what's important. What's important is what actually happens."

"That's exactly the way I see it." I murmured. "So you helped him do his dirty work. Big deal. Look where it's gotten you in the long run. Nowhere."

"That's not my fault, that's his fault. I did everything I was supposed to do. It was Bugs that couldn't follow through on his own promises. To tell you the truth, I'd take a piece outta him myself if he wasn't such a fuckin' Kung Fu master or whatever that shit is."

"Trust me, you won't have to worry about that." I assured him. "All you have to do is tell me where I can find him."

He hesitated, wriggling around nervously in his seat. "I . . . I don't know where Bugs is."

I frowned. "You mean you can't even guess?"

"Lola knows where he is."

"Okay, then where is she?"

"She's a . . . she's a teacher . . . up in New York."

"A teacher? What about Elmer?"

"Elmer?"

"Yes, Elmer. Elmer Fudd."

"He's in Michigan . . . at some hunting competition. I don't know the details."

"And Foghorn?"

"He . . . he owns a gas station out in the desert." Everything seemed to freeze up. "Is . . . is that all?"

I could almost feel the tensions mounting all around me. With those last few words, he'd basically given me the go-ahead. Normally, I would've popped off a few witty remarks and made him sweat a little before I pulled the trigger, but in this case, something felt as if it were amiss. There was suspense in the air. Here I was, surrounded by strangers, all of them eyeing me angrily, and not one of them moving a single muscle. Something was going to happen. I could tell. Nothing ever came this easily to me.

My mind racing, I muttered the first thing that went through my head.

"Thanks," I said, "but no thanks."

I held the gun up to eye level and gazed down the sight. My thumb pulled back the hammer. My grip tightened around the handle. One eye shut while the other repositioned. The reticule hovered over his forehead and my finger began to stiffen, depressing the trigger.

But, of course, there was always a complication. For it was then that the lights shut off all around me. Sylvester, the girls, Felix—they all disappeared into darkness and melted into shadows upon shadows. The gun went off, but it didn't hit a thing, and suddenly I could feel myself being pulled to the ground—thrust, if you will—simultaneously by five invisible bodies. There was a rumble and a screech and a few punches to the face, and before I knew it, they had me subdued.

The lights burst back into life and suddenly I found myself staring up at all five of Sylvester's girls, each one cuter than the one before her. They were grimacing, bearing their teeth like a pack of tigers. Somewhere along the line, I'd lost my gun, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway, since they'd pinned my arms and legs to the floor.

For a moment, everything was quite still as Sylvester hobbled his way across the room. One of his girls picked the gun up off the floor and he snatched it away without saying a word. My chest went up and down. All that suspense was going straight to my head. It seemed, once again, that the end was upon me. I was running out of lucky escapes, and I couldn't see any possible way of overcoming the strength of five angry dames all at once, so I closed my eyes, and I let my muscles relax. What was going to happen? Only time would tell.

Sylvester stood towering over me, fire burning in his eyes, rage like I'd never seen before.

"If I learned one thing in all my years," he said, sounding uncharacteristically intelligent, "it's that you never speak before you act. And now, because _you_ decided to try and make a fool outta me, you're gonna die in the worst way possible: with your foot in your fuckin' mouth."

_Bang._

It was all over so quickly. With one shot, one split second, everything had changed. I could finally see the light. Sylvester's body was stiff and rigid, his face contorted, obviously surprised. His eyes, stony and dim, poured out every last drop of personality until they were both empty and cold, completely lifeless. He slumped down and fell on his back, dropping his gun to the floor with an echoing thud.

For a few seconds, nobody made a sound. We were all struck with wonder. No one could figure out exactly what had happened. After all, it was me, the duck, that was supposed to be dead, not him, the cat.

And then Felix walked back into the picture, holding his own gun in his own hand, looking weak and pale, though spirited nonetheless. He spat at Sylvester's unmoving body and whispered through a raspy throat:

"Friends."

And so, it became clear, as Sylvester's girls pulled off of me and piled onto their pimp's lifeless remains, that Felix, the one I'd least suspected to help me out, had been the one to save my life.

Slowly, I got to my feet and outstretched my hand for him to shake, which he did with little hesitation.

"Thanks." I said.

And before they knew it, I was gone.

_End of Chapter Five._


	6. Over The Water

_Chapter Six: **Over The Water**_

_Many, many years ago . . ._

_Somewhere in China . . ._

Bugs. Lola. Me. The three of us had come to China in hopes of meeting with Wile E Coyote, the legendary martial arts master who had since sought exile deep in the Himalayan Mountains. Warner Bros., his former employers, weren't exactly forthcoming when it came to the details either, and they urged us not to ask about it, even as they paid for our travel fees and airline tickets. Thus, Wile E's conspiratorial back-story remained shrouded in mystery.

You must understand, this was back before the money and the fame. This was back before the legacy and the stardom. This was back when Bugs and Lola were still married and back before the public even knew she existed. All this happened back in the good old days when we knew for sure that left was left and right was right. Back then we were still ourselves.

And that's exactly why I boasted, right in front of my two companions no less, that I, in fact, could scale the enormous Muztag Mountain—where Wile E had made his home—all in one short afternoon without ever stopping to rest. Of course, they chuckled and rolled their eyes at each me. And of course, I stormed off in a blind rage just to prove I wasn't lying. And of course, I was. And of course, the journey proved to be much more difficult than I had initially thought. And of course, the backpack I had hoisted over my shoulder was a lot heavier than it looked. And of course, well . . . you get the picture.

But nevertheless, there was indeed an upside. You see, Wile E had apparently been determined to make his home a shrine, so in case the mountain itself, with its icy peaks and grassy green slopes, didn't intimidate the weak of body and mind, the seemingly infinite stone staircase that crawled up its side most certainly would. Not me though. I was impossible to deter, especially since I was right in the middle of proving a point to my so-called "friends."

What I failed to realize was that even the most notorious of mountain climbers wouldn't dare dash up a rock like this without pausing to catch their second wind. I, on the other hand, didn't live by the same rules as everyone else. However, as I closed in on the halfway mark, I began to wish that I did.

I could almost hear my heart banging away in my chest. Sweat slid down my forehead and my veins throbbed on beat like a metronome. My feet ached, all scrunched up inside a pair of heavy-soled, leather Timberland boots, and weird delusions swam in and out of my head. The sun was bearing down on me like an angry lion as my temperature slowly rose above one hundred and a deep-seeded pressure rooted itself vengefully in my eye sockets.

Every now and then, I'd stop and look back at Bugs and Lola who now seemed to be miles and miles away. Sometimes they were walking. Sometimes they were talking. Sometimes they were watching me. Sometimes they weren't. But no matter what they were doing, it wasn't long before I'd turn back around and continue my journey up the mountain. I was very careful to make sure it didn't look as though I were giving up. After all, that was a must.

As the day pushed on, the sun sank down behind Muztag's uneven peak and the clouds came rushing up to tuck it in and say goodnight. Then the moon appeared and the stars all twinkled like a million tiny candles in the sky and I was still climbing. I'd been climbing so long I could barely remember what exactly was at the top, assuming I ever reached it. It was like looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Everything seemed to stretch and bend and contort and slip out of focus. The end was so close, yet it looked so far away.

At this point, I was no longer in control of my body. I had grown so used to the process of constantly stepping up and up and up and up that I barely even noticed it taking place anymore. It was as if I were alone in a movie theater, watching it all play out on a screen in front of me. I figured I could fall asleep right there and still manage to climb with my eyes closed. And since my head was admittedly a little out of whack at the time, I even decided to try it.

Calmly, I let my eyelids droop lower and lower until they were shut completely, and for a moment I smiled, because the pressure was slowly beginning to dissipate.

But then, everything changed. The stony surface underfoot vanished in a flash and I found myself tumbling to the ground, which, for the first time in a long time, was almost completely flat. I let my arms break my fall as I collided, face-first, with the frostbitten dirt. Surprised, I bit my tongue and my eyes shot open as I gasped for air.

There I was, lying sprawled out on the ground, only inches away from . . . somebody's feet. I craned my neck to try and see who it was, but before I could get a good look, everything went black.

_

* * *

_

Something touched me and I sat bolt upright, right where I was, as if I'd been struck by lightning. Lola jumped back and almost slid off the edge of my bed, clutching her chest in shock. Embarrassed, I frowned on her behalf.

"Oh, sorry." I said quietly.

"No, no, it's okay." She reassured me, catching her breath. "It's just . . . you scared me."

My eyes slowly wandered around the room. "Where are we?" I asked without expecting an answer. Cobalt-colored light filtered in through the dust-choked windows so Lola's face looked blue. Straw littered the cold, concrete floor below and two more beds were situated against opposite walls—one of them empty, one of them not. Bugs was apparently still asleep.

"Well," Lola began, "about an hour after _you_ got to the top of the stairs," we shared a smile, "Bugs and I did too. We looked around for a little bit and we saw this door was open, so we came in here."

"Oh." I nodded. "_I_ passed out."

She giggled. "I can tell."

"But hey," I said, segueing right back into my routine, "I _did_ make it to the top, now didn't I? _And_ without stopping, no less!"

She grinned. "And we're all very proud of you."

"As you should be." I hugged myself for warmth. The room was chilly. "So did you see Wile E anywhere?"

"Nah." She shook her head. "We didn't spot him." Pause. "Did you?"

"No." Pause. "Well . . . maybe."

"What do you mean?"

"It's just . . . no. It's nothing. I didn't see him."

She frowned. "Oh. Okay."

A lull of silence came to hang between us. Neither of us could quite make eye contact. We were merely friends-by-association. We'd never gone one-on-one in a conversation like this before. Bugs was the glue that held us together. Without him, we were like two deadpan losers just scrambling to make small talk.

I couldn't think of anything to say, so I uttered the first thing that popped into my head. "So . . . how long have you been up?"

"I don't know." She said shortly. "Maybe a half-an-hour."

It struck me as odd that she'd wasted all that time waiting for _me_ to wake up rather than Bugs, but I didn't say anything.

"Boy, I'll tell ya'," she went on, "it gets pretty lonely when you're the only one who's awake."

I smiled. "I know what you mean."

And again, the silence echoed between us.

"Y'know . . . " I struggled to get the words out, "Bugs never did tell me. Why _did_ you come along with us?" Realizing how bad that sounded, I worked fast to correct it. "I mean, not to be rude. I like seeing you and everything, it's just . . . you're not gonna be in any cartoons, are you? So what do you need all this training for?"

Her eyes fell half-lidded. "You _really_ know how to talk to women, don't you?"

"I—I was just saying—"

"Daffy, have you ever been married?"

The question made my heart sink and my stomach drop. I hesitated for a long time as the memories came flooding back. "Yeah. Once." I said softly. "She was . . . " My voice trailed off. "I—I'm sorry . . . if I offended you."

Lola looked as if I'd stuck a dagger in her heart. "No, no, no. That's—that's my fault. I . . . I apologize. I didn't know . . . it was such a touchy subject. I—I was just gonna say that . . . that I came along because . . . I wanted to be with Bugs. That's all."

I could see, as she said those words, that she was just now realizing who she'd been talking to for the last few minutes and that it most certainly wasn't her husband.

Unfortunately for her, she didn't have a chance to do anything about it. The door that led outside burst open like an overstretched belt buckle and bounced off the wall with a thud. Bugs awoke in a flash and nearly leapt out of his skin. All eyes shot towards the open doorway as a hooded figure, draped in a dark, black cloak, came drifting into the room, as silent as a mouse. Slowly, he raised his head and we could see that beneath the hood, his fur was a vivid, chocolate brown and his eyes were crisp and golden. It didn't take long for us to realize that we had finally come face-to-face with the legendary Wile E Coyote. He watched us all intently as we sat there, still in shock from his extremely sudden entrance. Nobody said a word.

"Well," Wile E barked, at last breaking the silence, "you're finally here." He took a step closer. "I hope you're all well-rested, because from this day forward, I expect nothing less than complete and utter commitment from each and every one of you. If you can't take the heat, then I suggest you leave. You will get no sympathy from me." He raised his hands up to his chin and cracked his knuckles loudly. "Right now, as I look at your faces, I can see that you are all pathetic, and I won't be goaded into thinking otherwise very easily. At least, not yet." Bugs wisely fought back a yawn and Wile E continued. "Meet me outside in front of the statue. Immediately." And with that, he turned and left, leaving us only to stare at each other in disbelief.

This was only the beginning, I could tell.

* * *

"The statue" was really an understatement. A more appropriate descriptor would've been, perhaps, "the enormous statue," or even better, "the ridiculous statue," for the huge stone sculpture that jutted its way from the ground outside our bedroom was anything but reasonable. And even worse yet, it depicted Wile E himself standing high and tall above two painfully miniscule businessmen in pitch-black suits, groveling at his feet. Whether or not the image was at all related to the coyote's ongoing feud with Warner Bros. would remain to be seen, although I had no intentions of finding out.

Wile E stood with his back to us. A bitter wind blew through the trees and I shivered instinctively. A moment of contemplative silence passed and Wile E slowly turned around to face the three of us with icy cold eyes. He stepped forward and nodded towards Lola.

"Your name." He commanded.

She hesitated. "Lola. Lola Bunny."

Wile E repeated the name. "Lola." He stroked his chin. "You are aware, Lola, that this is a man's world, are you not?"

It was clear that she didn't know what to say. "I—"

"And you aware," he continued, "that you will receive no special treatment simply because of your gender, am I correct?"

"Yeah, I wouldn't—"

"Good." Wile E approached her, stone-faced and stern. "And what prior training do you possess," he paused, "if any, in the martial arts?"

"Well . . . " she screwed up her face as if deep in thought, "I—I used to know a little bit of Kali."

"Used to know? A little bit?" Wile E snapped. "Is that supposed to impress me?"

She sighed. "No, I just—"

"Moving on." Wile E interrupted her, shifting his gaze now towards Bugs. "Name."

"Bugs Bunny." He was calm.

"Oh, so you two are—"

"Married." Bugs and Lola said in unison.

Wile E grimaced. "I was going to say brother and sister." He cracked a brief smirk but nobody dared to laugh. "So what style might _you_ have mastered, Bugs?" He asked sarcastically.

"Kung Fu."

"Kung Fu." Wile E restated as if he had seen it coming from the get-go. "And to what extent?"

"I—I think I'm pretty good at it."

"You _think?_" Wile E groaned. "You _think_ you're pretty good at it?" He stuck his finger in Bugs's face. "Perhaps you were unaware, my friend, but there can be no _thinking_ when it comes to Kung Fu. Only knowing. If I were to strike you at this very moment, and if I were to tear your beating heart from your chest, you could do nothing about it, simply because you only _think_ you know Kung Fu. Does that make any sense to you, simpleton, or is your brain still far too feeble to understand such a concept?"

I couldn't help but snicker, and, naturally it was the worst possible decision I could've made.

Wile E turned his sights immediately towards me. "And what might _you_ be laughing at?"

I froze like a deer in the headlights. "N—nothing."

"Your name."

"Daffy Dumas Duck."

He frowned. "Daffy, eh? It suits you."

My heart picked up in speed. "Never heard that one before." I muttered sarcastically.

Wile E ignored the comment. "So what do you do?"

Beaming with overconfidence, I puffed out my chest and stated proudly, "_I_ am an _expert_ in the exquisite art of Korean Tae Kwon Do."

"Oh really? An expert?" Wile E mused, feigning astonishment. "Isn't that amazing?" He took a step backwards. "Well, since you are such a _distinguished expert,_ I'm sure you wouldn't mind showing me, now would you?"

My heart sank into my stomach. "What?"

"Strike me." His expression was blunt and demanding.

I could feel the blood rushing to my face. "S—strike you?"

"Strike me, hit me, attack me, whatever you want to call it. Do it."

I looked to Bugs and Lola for help, but neither of them offered up a consoling glance.

"Don't look at them. Look at me." Wile E growled. I did. "Good. Now hit me, Goddamnit."

My legs shaking like maracas, I willed my limbs to move and somehow managed to slip into the feeblest of fighting stances. Wile E didn't say a word. My heart racing, I worked up a handful of courage and set loose a miserable roundhouse kick, which he proceeded to dodge easily.

"Oh, come on. What was that?" He taunted. "Is that what experts do?"

Embarrassed, I kicked again and Wile E stomped down on my leg like a sledgehammer. My knee crashed into the dirt and a stinging pang soared up the back of my quad muscles. Biting my tongue, I tried to look as though it didn't hurt quite as much as it did. Wile E glared down at me disapprovingly.

"Just as I thought." He mumbled. "All fear. No confidence. With an attitude like that, you'll be dead in a week." He lifted up his foot and I staggered away, massaging my leg where it hurt. "Well," he continued, looking now at Bugs and Lola, "your friend certainly couldn't do it, so let's see if you can help him. Strike me."

Neither of them moved.

"Now!" He commanded.

Bugs was the first to bite the bullet. Fists flailing, he threw himself at Wile E, only to be sent, moments later, tumbling to the ground.

"Pathetic." The coyote scolded him. "Your muscles announce your every move."

Lola was next. She made a few misguided jabs at Wile E's chest, only to have her hands intercepted and her feet swept right out from under her.

"Defend yourself." Wile E instructed her. "You must be ready for anything and everything."

Then it was my turn. Anxious to show Wile E that I wasn't nearly as daffy as he'd initially thought, I came charging at him full force and slid into a near-perfect Flamingo Stance at the very last instant. His eyes sparkled with surprise and I lashed out with a low kick, only to be deflected once more. His attention diverted, I sent my fist flying at his nose, but hit nothing but air. Seconds later, I could feel the wind escape my lungs as he slammed into my stomach with both hands and I hit the ground with a thud.

"Terrible." He snarled. "Too slow." He was egging me on. "Try it again."

But Bugs was already in motion. He came sprinting at Wile E from behind, only to glide right past him as the coyote slid out of the way. He held his arm out and Bugs ran straight into it, back-flipping his way to the ground. Blood spurted from his nose.

"Now what did I just tell you?" Wile E snorted.

Lola came creeping up from the side, only to be kicked directly in the face. Her head snapped back and she nearly lost her balance. Wile E didn't even bother to comment. Then it was me again. Sweating a little, I sent a flurry of punches at the unconcerned, unimpressed coyote, all of which he proceeded to block. On the last one, he grabbed hold of my forearm and twisted it until I fell helplessly to one knee. He shoved me to the ground.

"Shameful recovery." He pointed out. "Remember that pain is but a sensation."

When no one was looking, Lola had dashed over to the weapons rack and removed a long, flexible Chinese sword from the topmost shelf. Like a hungry wolf, she ran at Wile E, slashing away, as if she wanted nothing more than to slice his head clean off. Gracefully, as if it took no effort, he calmly danced around her ever swipe until an opening arose at which point he knocked the blade from her hands. It landed tip first in a moist patch of soil and he pushed her away. She stumbled backwards and crashed into a barrel full of water.

"So we have a cheater on our hands, do we?" Wile E shook his head in disgust.

Bugs was still on the ground, clutching his nose with both hands to try and calm the bleeding, so I took the initiative and went at Wile E myself. But I was getting reckless. I fell victim to a punch in the face, yet still somehow managed to maintain my balance. I kicked at his knees and he jumped right over it, grabbing my neck with one hand as he came back down, and for the second time in a row, he shoved me away. I rolled into a backwards somersault and ended up lying on my back.

"Your ineptness worries me, my friend." He said snidely.

Apparently, my two companions were finished. Lola was soaking wet and sat with her arms crossed right where she'd fallen, a look of contempt in her eyes. Bugs, on the other hand, was still down on all fours, his milky white gloves now stained with crimson red blood.

Seeing as I was the only one left, I felt it was my duty to stand and fight again. So that's exactly what I did. Wile E beckoned me with his index finger and I growled angrily before charging at him full-speed. Every step was like a buildup and my brain was swimming with pride, telling me that I was finally going to hit him and end this. So I kept running and running and closing in closer and closer until finally . . .

He kicked me in the stomach and sent me flying into a tree. My head hit the trunk with a loud thud and I fell to the ground, unconscious.

_

* * *

_

For the second time in less than a day, I found myself waking up with my head on a pillow. Apparently I'd been out cold for quite a while. It was nighttime outside and the eerie, white glow of the moon cast ominous shadows along the floor and walls as it poured intrusively through the windows.

I sat up slowly, clutching my head to ease the ache that lingered above my left eye. Looking around I could see that Lola was asleep in her bed and that Bugs was missing from his own. Unsure of what to do, I made up my mind to try and find him.

Crawling out of bed, I shoved my hands in my pockets and quietly slipped outside.

It was dark out, but still not much colder than it had been earlier in the day. Crickets chirped from their hiding places deep in the brush and the dry, unhealthy dirt crackled underfoot. A short gust of wind blew past me and I allowed my beak to chatter in the bitterness.

Beyond our tiny, unventilated bedroom and the gigantic statue that stood at the edge of the training grounds, there was a third building—the only one that seemed to keep at all with any sort of oriental tradition. It was made mostly of wood—dark red with a natural-looking grain—and its roof, constructed solely out of bamboo, was vaulted loftily. Along the sides were several wide, Japanese, rice paper windows that seemed to float where right they were in space, as if they were separate from the building that they were actually a part of. Through them I could see there was a light on inside and, intrigued, began to approach the structure.

As I neared what seemed to be the front door, a couple of faint voices—almost certainly belonging to Bugs and Wile E—found their way to my ears. I tiptoed up the short staircase that rose to the door and pressed the side of my head up against the wood, hoping to hear more. Unfortunately, it was impossible to discern exactly what they were talking about. Wile E was the loud one and Bugs was mumbling at a much lower volume than his usual, jovial tone.

Then, as suddenly as I'd heard them, the voices stopped. I hesitated for a moment to see if they would start up again, then stepped back from the door just as Bugs came piling through it. Nearly knocking me over, he stopped short, just an inch from my face and jumped in surprise.

"Daffy!" He yelped, clutching his chest as though a heart attack were imminent. "Ya' scared me!"

"Sorry." I apologized softly, my eyes darting around nervously. "S—so what's going on here?"

"Oh," he placed a hand on his hip, catching his breath, "oh, 'dat's—'dat's nothin'. He—Wile E wanted to start trainin' us right away."

"Training?" I repeated. "Did I miss my turn?"

Bugs shook his head. "Nah. He just told me to go an' wake ya' up."

There was a pause. Something about that last sentence made my heart race. He had said it so plainly, so matter-of-factly, and with a tone that seemed to imply that _that_ particular action was somehow very common. The words themselves seemed to heighten my vulnerability and quietly inferred some sort of weakness. Even worse yet was the fact that an image—and a very specific one at that—went right along with it. I could easily picture myself lying on that bed in the dark with my eyes closed, unconscious and completely oblivious to the world around me—a 'sitting duck,' if you will—mindful not even of my own body. In a way, it made me feel fragile and small inside—like a sleeping baby that required constant attention—and I resented the comparison.

All these thoughts rushed through my head in the time it took my eyes to blink a single time, and the awkward silence still lingered there between us. So, as any true, red-blooded conversationalist would do in a situation such as this, I calmly changed the subject.

"So, what'd he make you do in there?"

Bugs scratched his head. "Uh, sorry, but . . . " he trailed off.

"What?" I prodded, leaning towards him.

"He said not to tell ya'."

I rolled my eyes in disbelief. "C'mon! It's me!"

"I—I don't think I should." He was slowly backing away. "Lola told me 'da same thing."

I sighed heavily. "Fine. If that's the way it is then that's the way it is. I just thought we were better friends than that."

"Oh, it's nothin' like 'dat, Daffy." He assured me. "I promise I'll tell ya' 'da first chance I get."

"It doesn't matter." I went on rather pompously. "I'm sure I'll do just fine without a sneak preview. Wile E doesn't know what he's up against this time."

Bugs frowned, clearly annoyed. "Well I hope ya' have fun 'den." He concluded, turning away and traipsing down the stairs.

"You know I will." I answered.

Before long, Bugs had disappeared into the blackness of the night, headed back to the dormitory to crash next to his wife. I turned back to the open doorway that he'd emerged from just moments ago and drew in a deep breath. I'd been bullshitting everybody from day one. I wasn't at all confident up against Wile E. Something about him frightened me—his sternness, his tone of voice, whatever. At any rate, this was certainly not the moment I'd been looking forward to.

But then again, I wasn't one to back down from a challenge. If Wile E wanted a student, he'd get a student—the best damn student he'd ever had.

My heart thumping fretfully, I slowly stepped past the threshold and into the dojo. There wasn't a single light on inside, only candles—dim ones, dripping with wax—lined up on either side of the narrow chamber. A scarlet red carpet was rolled out along the center, and the rice paper windows to the left and right were almost invisible in the foreboding, shadowy darkness.

The space all around me felt heavy, as if the entire world had suddenly tensed its nerves on my behalf. With every step I took, I expected something to leap right out at me and attack; thus, I balled my hands into clumsy, sweat-stained fists to ward off the impending assault.

I crossed, with flat feet, to the center of the room and came to a cautious stop between the two long rows of candles, my eyes darting back and forth.

"Uh . . . Mr. Coyote?" I called out tensely. "Master, sir?"

A gust of wind blew past, but before I could react, my hands were flung together and locked into cuffs.

"Don't say a word." Wile E whispered in my ear.

"Wh—why? What're we doing?" I was still reeling from his sudden appearance.

"Don't think. Just act." He answered, backing away into the darkness.

My heart was racing now. I had absolutely no idea what to do. There wasn't any foreseeable way that I could make him happy. Glancing around frantically and turning red from embarrassment, I looked down at my hands, bound in cuffs, and took a long, deep breath.

As my ego slowly returned, albeit damaged, I quickly puffed out my chest and pulled with all my might in a feeble attempt to break the chain that tied my wrists together. It hurt, no doubt, as the steel bit into my skin, but I continued on nonetheless, pulling until I was out of breath. I rested for a moment, then, and gathered my strength once more before starting all over again. A cold sweat broke out along my forehead and my eyes felt like they were about to bug right of their sockets. Blood spattered against the handcuffs as I pulled harder and they sliced into my skin. I groaned this time as my lungs emptied with a ridiculous sigh. I was panting.

Wile E was nowhere in sight, watching instead from the blackness all around me.

I raised my wrists for the third time and brought them together, dripping blood, before thrusting them both outward in hopes of gathering momentum. They stopped short as the chain was pulled taught and I winced with pain. Biting down hard on my tongue, I tried stiffly to ignore it and kept pulling regardless, knowing, deep down inside, that there was no way I would ever be able break free.

Before long, the pain became too much for me to endure and I fell to my knees with a thud, crumpling up inside.

"Damnit!" I cursed aloud, letting my head fall to my chest. "I can't do it!"

"Really?" Came Wile E's voice from behind. "Why not?"

Panting hard, I slowly allowed the words to come tumbling out. "I'm not . . . strong enough."

"You're not strong enough." Wile E repeated. "Is that why?"

Slowly, although knowing it was the wrong answer, I nodded.

"Daffy, let me explain something to you." He began, casually circling around me. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with your muscles. It's all in your head. Strength alone will not determine whether or not you can break that chain. It's your will that's truly important—your will to survive, your will to fight on, your will to destroy the opposition." He paused, as if for effect. "It's the strength of your heart, not your body, that really matters."

I closed my eyes. My ego had fallen to pieces. "What if I don't have any?"

"_That,_" he shot back, "is the one thing that you will _never_ be able to convince me of." He held his hands behind his back. "We only just met today, Daffy, and yet somehow I feel as though I've known you forever. You've already displayed so much more strength of heart than you give yourself credit for—more even than your two companions."

"Wh—what do you mean?"

"Consider, perhaps, when you first arrived here yesterday. You were the first to reach the top of those stairs—or even today—when your friends surrendered to my dominance in the courtyard, you, on the other hand, never gave up the fight. And that is your strong point."

His words took a moment to settle themselves inside my head. "And what about my weak point?"

A broad smile crossed his stony face. "You doubt yourself. You doubt your strength, you doubt your will, you doubt your heart. You doubt your looks and you doubt your intelligence. You doubt everything about yourself. You doubt what I'm saying is true."

I looked up suddenly.

"Yes." He went on. "Underneath that glib, pithy exterior—under all that ego and all that enthusiasm—is a weak little boy whose face has somehow been turned away from the sunlight. You're so unsure of the path before you that it leaves so much to be desired on the path behind you. While one such as your friend—the rabbit—is marked by true arrogance and overconfidence, he has, in fact, nowhere left to grow. He has reached his full potential, and soon he shall have no choice but to fall. And that alone will one day become his downfall." A pause. I blinked. "You, on the other hand, have a future. You have promise. You have potential that you have yet to grow into. And when you reach that potential, when you tap it for all it's worth, the world will be met with its newest ruler." His smile flickered, then disappeared. "That is, of course, assuming you survive my training first."

I swallowed. "But isn't that just a huge cliché?"

"Yes, of course it is." He began, approaching me. "But clichés often have some truth to them, now don't they? After all, that's why they're clichés." He raised his arm high above his head and brought it down with a swoosh, slicing directly through the chain that bound my hands together. The cuffs split along the sides and slid open.

My eyes were filled with amazement and jealousy.

"Come on." He said. "Let's find you a weapon."

_

* * *

_

Brandishing a heavy, wooden torch in one hand and a frail, old skeleton key in the other, Wile E led me up a ladder, through a trap door, and into a small, dank room above the dojo. There were no windows, only candles, lined up in a circle around the blackened, midnight gloom of the place.

As Wile E went around the room, lighting all the candles one by one, it soon became clear to me just how serious he was about his work.

Shelves upon shelves and racks upon racks, all stacked with weapons, were spread out along the length of the floor, wall to wall, all the way to the ceiling. The sheer volume of weapons was absolutely astonishing. My mouth nearly dropped open on its own accord as I walked up and down the aisles, marveling at everything and anything that caught my eye.

"Have you had any prior weapons training?" Wile E asked, more lightly than I would've expected.

"No." I answered, running my fingertips over the blade of an enormous axe head. "But I've always wanted to."

I could almost feel the grin spreading wide over Wile E's face. "Then pick one. And that is what you will learn."

I couldn't imagine being able to choose. There was at least one of everything—Baton blades, Escrima sticks, fighting fans, Kamas axes and sickles, Kwan Dao staffs, nunchakus, sais, Ninja and Samurai swords, Kung Fu and Tai Chi swords, Bokken and Shinai swords, broadswords and Jutte swords, Bo and Jo staffs, tonfa, shurikens, throwing knives, fish darts, spears and spearheads, and countless others.

I was overwhelmed by a world that, at the time, I knew very little about. For a long time, I could do nothing but stare, although Wile E didn't seem to mind. In fact, he seemed to take joy in my indecision. It was as if it amused him. For the first time in a long time, his life—which, up until now had been nothing but a useless source of entertainment for his own lonely self—was displaying an actual purpose in its existence. It was affecting me, drawing me in, and at the same time, proving to himself that all his time—most of which he must've presumed had been wasted—perhaps had actually been worthwhile.

A glint of light crept into the corner of my eye, as if beckoning to me, and I turned suddenly to face it. It was a Samurai sword—simple yet somehow elegant and strangely complex. I wondered how I hadn't noticed it before. Its pitch-black sheath sparkled like a jewel, as though made of obsidian, while, conversely, the hilt and handle were made of the lightest of silver, wrapped firmly in blood red grip tape, and inset with diamonds.

Breathing softly, I reached out tremulously with both hands and removed the sword from its shelf. My heart rate seemed to quicken. Wrapping my fingers around the handle, I slid the blade from its case and looked down upon its shimmering beauty with awe-filled eyes. I held it out in front of me in order to see every inch and a warm feeling quickly shot up my arm. The steel seemed to glow with a strange aura, as if bathed in starlight that trickled up along the cutting edge where several tiny Japanese symbols had been inspirationally carved.

"So," came Wile E's voice from the door, "you like that one."

A long moment ticked by before I finally nodded.

"Your companions did too." He said. "Everybody does. Even me." He came over to where I stood. "It has . . . a power over people. I bought it from a lonely trader decades ago. He told me it had driven him mad. For a long time, I thought it would drive me mad as well. No one can escape it." He bent my wrist in several directions so the candlelight struck the blade at different angles. "But before long, it had grown tired even of me." He paused for a moment and sighed. "Can you see it glowing?"

Again, I nodded.

"I thought so. Its glow is gone for me." He took an unfortunate step back. "I promised this sword to both your friends, but I'm willing to give it to you instead."

I could barely speak. "Why?" I asked.

"Because, Daffy," he explained, "you need this sword just as much as it needs you. You must learn to grow and to have faith in yourself, and in the same manner, this sword must learn to satisfy its craving for new life. What better training ground is there for the two of you than right here?"

"But . . . what about Bugs and Lola?"

"They shall have to understand." He answered. "For her, she will be forced to cope with a loss at the hands of a male—one thing she most certainly dreads and despises. He, on the other hand, will have to come to terms with the fact that he is, indeed, _not_ immune to the trials and tribulations of his own life." Carefully, he took the sword from my hands and replaced it on the shelf. "But that's another speech for another time. Your formal training begins tomorrow. I'd advise you to get some rest."

_

* * *

_

Bugs and I had sought out Wile E's counsel merely in hopes of becoming more physically fit for the stunt-reliant and admittedly heavy-handed cartoons we'd both been contracted to star in. Lola, on the other hand, as she'd detailed to me earlier, was simply along for the ride. None of us, however, had anticipated just how blazingly physical Wile E's training was indeed to be.

Over the course of the next year-and-a-half, the three of us were pushed to our absolute limits in nearly every possible category. Wile E himself had taken the time to make every lesson personalized to suit each our needs, and the temporary vulnerability he'd displayed that night in the dojo never once reappeared. Every month, he'd have me punching through a more challenging object than the last. At first it was wood, then it was concrete, then it was stone, and eventually I was smashing through steel.

I carried enormous buckets of water up and down the side of the mountain without stopping, and, as time went on, the trips only grew easier. I lifted weights—eight hundred pounds and upwards sometimes—and bench-pressed entire boulders until the sun came up. I ran suicides back and forth down by the river at the base of the mountain until my throat was sore and I could barely breathe. I ran ten miles at a time and, afterwards, strolled straight into sword practice, and as time went on, I could feel the blade slowly becoming a part of me.

Wile E was equally ruthless when it came to my Tae Kwon Do lessons. He'd have me kicking and bending and unbending my knees for hours on end. It went hand-in-hand with all the flexibility and balance exercises he'd outlined for me. Apparently it didn't matter that I could touch my toes with ease unless I could do it while lying on my back, weighted down with a cinderblock on my chest. True, at times it almost seemed torturous, or even evil, but before long I was reaping the benefits and feeling better than I'd ever felt before. Bugs and Lola, too, were getting tougher.

For the first time in a long time, I was proud of myself. I could conquer anything and everything that came my way, and whenever Wile E pointed out a new weakness I hadn't noticed before, I'd work at it until it was virtually non-existent.

Mentally I was also growing stronger. Oftentimes, Wile E would simply have me take the day off to meditate down by the river. So I did. At first, I admit, it seemed ridiculous and cliché, but soon enough, I found myself emptying my mind of every last thought and reaching spiritual enlightenment with the best of them.

There was only one caveat. Every time Wile E brought out the handcuffs, I couldn't help but recoil in fear. He'd sprung them on me a few more times since that first day, and I was never able to break free, no matter how much effort and elbow grease I put into it. It was as if my body shriveled whenever I had them on, and Wile E only seemed to grow more and more impatient with each new failure.

Though, regardless, things were finally beginning to look up for me—and it was a joy, for once, to have that feeling.

_

* * *

_

The sun was shining high overhead like a lamp of God, flanked by crisp, white clouds, when Lola came stomping down the mountain pass with anger burning in her eyes. Again, I'd been meditating down at the river's edge, yet was somehow having trouble staying focused.

She looked around for a moment, spotted me, then came plodding over with an agitated groan.

I looked up as she approached. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing, just _this._" She yanked down the collar of her shirt to reveal a long, dark bruise that stretched all the way down the side of her neck. "Lovely, isn't it?"

Slowly, with my eyes wide, I got to my feet to take a closer look. "What happened?"

"Wile E." She replied. "He hit me. Said I wasn't listening to him. Fucking misogynist."

"Wow," I mused, "that must've hurt."

She placed her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes. "Of course it hurt, you id—" Catching herself, she stopped short and looked away. "No, no. I'm—I'm sorry. I'm just a little edgy right now." She sighed and her anger seemed to subside a little. "Anyway, I think that about does it for me around here."

My heart skipped a beat. "Wh—what do you mean?"

"I mean I'm leaving tomorrow." She said flatly. "I've already packed my stuff. I'm sick and tired of that Goddamn coyote always shoving me around. It's getting to a point where it's not even worth it anymore just to get . . . _tough._"

I couldn't explain it, but one part of me wanted desperately for her to stay. I liked having her around—even though we didn't talk much and she and Bugs always seemed to be bickering with each other—I couldn't imagine being there without her.

"Oh, come on," I protested, "is that all you think this is? Can you honestly tell me that?"

She hesitated. "N—no. I guess not."

A relieved smile crossed my face as I sat back down. "That's what I thought. I mean, I've got dozens of those bruises." Silence. "So, why do you _really_ want to leave?" Gazing up at her, I patted the patch of empty grass on the ground beside me.

Slowly conceding, she sat down and cradled her head in her hands. "It's Bugs."

"What about him?"

She stuck her tongue between her teeth. "I . . . I just can't stand him anymore." She paused. "I know that's a bad thing to say . . . but it's true."

I really had no idea how to feel about this sudden turn of events. Again, I was divided. I knew what I was _supposed_ to do. I knew that I was _supposed_ to support Bugs—at the time, my closest friend—but for some strange reason, this time I found myself erring on the other side. Lola must've had a pretty good reason for all of this, I thought. She wouldn't just pack up and leave so suddenly without deeply considering it first. Bugs must've really pushed her over the edge.

"It's not a bad thing if that's how you feel." I assured her. "I just think you should make sure you're doing the right thing first. I mean, have you told Bugs about this?"

She nodded. "He said, "Have a nice life, then, doll-face."" I cringed at the thought of it. That certainly didn't sound too good. "You can't imagine how sick I am of that jackass." She went on. "He's like the cool kid in high school, except he never stops."

I almost laughed. She was definitely telling the truth.

"But is it worth leaving?" I replied, our eyes meeting and holding for the first time in our lives. "Is it worth throwing two whole years of your life down the drain?"

"I know." She mumbled. "I've learned so much here. It was hard for me to make up my mind. But . . . I have to."

I looked towards the river as it trickled slowly past. "Well," I said, "I'm sure you know what's best for you."

A soft, almost pathetic smile briefly sank into her lips. "Thanks, Daffy." She murmured. "You've been so nice to me. I'm gonna miss you." And with that, she rested her head against my shoulder and shut her eyes with such a placidness that it seemed to make my heart stop inside my chest. It took a long, long time and a lot of empty silence for her to finally realize just how awkward it was.

_

* * *

_

Later that night, one of my less desirable traits just so happened to bubble to the surface—the strict inability to keep my big beak shut.

Bugs and I were alone in the bedroom, shrouded in darkness, both in our separate beds against opposite walls, still impossibly awake, lying stiff as two boards, when I decided—inappropriately I might add—to try and broach the subject that was clearly on both of our minds.

"So . . . " I droned, "she's gone." Not the greatest opening, I must admit.

Bugs didn't bother to answer for a while, and when he finally did, it was short and full of annoyance. "Yeah. She's gone." He grunted. "Go to sleep, Daffy."

I took offense to being commanded around like a child, but I figured now wasn't the most opportune moment to start up an argument. "I'm sorry." I apologized.

"I'm not." He replied. "If she don't want me, I don't want her. She was a bitch anyways."

I let my eyes droop lower and pulled the bed sheets up to my shoulders. "You don't really mean that do you?"

"Course I do." He shot back. "If she thinks she can make it on 'er own, she might as well give it a shot."

"Oh, c'mon, you—"

"Daffy," he snarled, "please just shut 'da fuck up and go to sleep."

Again, there was silence.

Slowly, and with an air of understanding, I nodded to myself. "Okay."

_

* * *

_

A few weeks passed by and the news of Lola's departure eventually came to creep out of our heads. We shifted back into focus mode, putting all effort back into our training. It was our only option, really, seeing as, naturally, Wile E had been completely unaffected by it.

One day, as summer was beginning to close in on Muztag Mountain's windblown peak, Wile E suggested that he and I take our usual early morning brick-breaking activities outside for once. It was a gesture, perhaps, of gratitude, so I didn't resist. We set up in the sparse and open-ended bamboo forest that sprouted up selectively on one side of the mountain where the birds were particularly loud that morning.

The sun peeked in through the jade green treetops and gently warmed my feathers until they nearly sizzled and dripped with sweat as the hours dragged on. Brick after brick, brick after brick, I followed the endless process of clearing my mind and concentrating my power. The secret was, in fact, less spiritual than most martial artists would have you believe, however. It all revolved around exerting the highest possible amount of force over the shortest possible amount of time, and by then I'd grown strong enough to shatter those huge bricks with one quick swat.

It seemed even easier out here. I let my ears fall in tune with the droning chirp of the insects that dwelled within the grass and the chirping birds that sang aloud from the branches up above, and soon enough I had reached a pinnacle of enlightenment that only seemed to sweep me up inside and swallow me whole.

Wile E, on the other hand, appeared almost bored. He wore a frown like he wore his pants—stiff and rigid, with a huge crease down the middle. For a while now, his lessons had lacked the enthusiasm and the emotional drive that they had once held so dear. I figured it must've been stemming from my inability to conquer the ever-prevailing handcuff test. I'd tried it several more times since that first day—sometimes even on my own—yet I could never seem to get a grip on it, which is exactly why Wile E's words startled me a bit on this day of days.

"In less than a month," he began as the pile of cinderblocks diminished to eleven, "your training will be complete."

My heart jumped abruptly and I nearly broke my hand coming down a brick. "Wh—what do you mean in less than a month?" I asked after I'd recovered.

"Just like I said." He answered dispiritedly. "In less than a month this will all be over."

I blinked. "So . . . you think I've learned everything then?"

He glared at me. "Daffy, you should know by now that it's quite impossible to learn _everything._" He paused. "Of course, if I wished to transform you—to make you a master such as I—I could keep you here for a lifetime. But in this case, such an extension would be truly unnecessary." He looked down at the ground. "Your masters—the men in suits," there was a certain bite to his tone, "they paid me to make you stronger—more agile and more durable—and that I have most certainly accomplished."

The birds continued to sing. The crickets continued to buzz.

Slightly disappointed with the suddenness in which this had all come to clarity, I gazed back down at the brick that stood propped up before me and raised my arm once more to strike it down.

"No." Wile E took a step forward. "That's fine." He said sullenly. "We're done for today."

Obediently, I slowly lowered my arm. "Are—are you okay?"

He turned away from me. "You're my favorite student." He began unfortunately. "Do you know that, Daffy?" I didn't answer him. "Your friend, he's—he's talented, certainly." He went on. "There's no denying that. Never have I seen such raw power coupled with such perfect harmony." He looked upwards, towards the treetops. "Yet, at the same time, I dislike him intensely. He's arrogant . . . and rash. Never once have I seen him flicker or falter—and while that may appear to be an advantage to him now, you mark my words, one day it will be his undoing." He turned to face me. "You, on the other hand, _you_ have a future. That's what I like about you." He held his finger an inch from my bill. "When you reach your full potential . . . you will be _unstoppable._ A mighty fine thing, too, for I sense great turmoil in the years to come."

The birds went quiet. "Turmoil?" I repeated. "What kind of turmoil?"

He sighed and withdrew his finger. "I'm an instructor, not a fortune teller, Daffy. I'm only spilling out my thoughts." He turned away from me once more. "The final challenge is fast approaching. I suggest you practice your swordplay."

I didn't move. The way he'd mentioned it seemed almost like a warning.

"Good day." He said conclusively.

_

* * *

_

Two weeks went by without incident—though with each passing minute I seemed to grow all the more anxious. The end was upon me, and yet I still wasn't sure if I was ready. Wile E had attempted to build me up, but to no avail. Thus, I slipped back into my usual ego defense, irritating the hell out of Bugs in the process, and worked day-in and day-out in preparation for the, quote, "final challenge."

One rainy mid-morning, I snatched up my sword and wandered on down the side of the mountain, avoiding the endless staircase at all costs, until I came to a small stream that seemed to somehow cut its leisurely way straight through the rocks—like a jackhammer, smashing through concrete.

For a moment, I could only stand there, listening to the bubble and the babble of the water as it gently trickled by. I gazed down at my sword. I unsheathed it from its case. A sharp metallic ring echoed off the rocks as the blade slid free. Rain pelted the cold, hard steel and I looked up towards the sky, letting my face become covered in it as more fell from the wide-open zenith of gray that stretched out above me, on and on, for as far as I could see.

I shut my eyes. Whatever this final challenge was, I was ready for it.

_

* * *

_

Wile E was already waiting for me inside the dojo. As was Bugs. I'd figured all of this would somehow involve him as well. Wile E glanced sideways from his seat on the right side of the room as I burst in through the doors, soaked with rainwater, but with a look of quiet confidence set deep within my eyes.

"Daffy," Wile E mused, "glad you could finally join us."

I didn't move or even break my eye line with Bugs. Wile E didn't seem to mind.

"Welcome," he continued, "to the final challenge."

Bugs looked just as confident as I did. There was a certain stillness somewhere within him. His face seemed almost flat, with distinct lines beneath his eyes, and his fur was crisp and well-groomed. The sword he held in his hand looked almost identical to mine, but with a blue trim rather than red.

"The two of you will engage in battle," Wile E explained slowly, "as if you were mortal enemies, and you will not stop until a clear victor has been decided."

I'd seen it coming from a mile away.

"Whether or not you fight to kill is up to you." His lips curled into a smirk. A joke. "But regardless of the outcome, I want the two of you to know that you both have proven yourselves as absolutely phenomenal students in more ways than one. And for the continual commitment that you have both routinely displayed, I thank you."

That was as personal as it ever got with someone like Wile E.

The tension was quickly mounting all around us, reaching a fevered pitch. The coyote raised his hand high above his head, let it linger for a moment, then brought it down in one sudden, explosive fell swoop. "Begin!"

Bugs and I stared at each other for a moment, before finally willing our limbs into motion.

I took the first step, flinging my sword's shiny, obsidian sheath to the side as I picked up the pace from a walk to a jog to a run—all the way down the red carpet that stretched across the center of the room. Bugs narrowed his eyes and came charging at me full-force—like a deadly game of chicken—his sword down at his side, the rush of air bending the candlelight that sparked all around us.

We met in the center of the room, our blades slashing at each other's throats, clashing together and ringing viciously in our ears like breaking glass as we danced—inward, outward, side-to-side, top to bottom. We moved so quickly and with such grace that our actions would've been indiscernible to the untrained eye. Our feet switched to best support our balance and our hearts raced like two Brown Derby horses on a career ending run down the mud-stained track.

Bugs snuck in a kick that sent me flying through the air like a Frisbee. I hit the ground with a thud, looking up just in time to spot my opponent—high above me—leaping into the air with his sword raised high up over his head, coming down to strike. I blocked it with my own and the steel shrieked as sparks erupted from where they met, and for a split second, I could see into Bugs's eyes. I could see the emotion burning deep inside as he gritted his teeth and growled like a ferocious monster. He wanted to win this just as much as I did—perhaps even more.

My entire leg below the knee suddenly developed a mind of its own and smashed powerfully into Bugs's calf, sending him on a swift collision course with the floor. I crab-walked back out of his reach before we both got to our feet, a little more warily than before.

Stretching to full height, Bugs cracked the slightest of smiles. I returned the favor and suddenly we were at it again. He came at me with more momentum this time, pushing me back farther, up the stairs and beyond the limits of the sunken dojo as I defended against his persistent and often well-crafted onslaught. Before I knew it, we were outside, beneath the awning at the edge of the roof, rain trickling down at our sides.

Wile E came rushing towards us as we fought, desperate to keep up with all the action. His eyes shot back and forth as he came to stop at the base of the stairs, watching us both closely and with the strict intentness of a cat bound by prevailing curiosity.

Our blades clashed yet again and we shoved off of each other, leaving a wide-open space between us. For a moment, then, we paused, eyeing one another intensely. Bugs sneered openly at me, panting just in the slightest. I stuck my tongue out at him and roped it back in like a snake on a scent. We were both evenly matched, and I knew it even if he didn't.

Wile E was excited, I could tell. One quick glance told the whole story. A toothy smile had broken out all across his face like a bad case of acne. He enjoyed seeing all the skills he'd trained us both to master suddenly come to such convenient and beautiful fruition all at once. But even so, it wasn't hard to figure out just who he was rooting for. I wouldn't let him down.

This time, it was my turn to start. Just as Bugs had done to me earlier, I fought towards him and into him with such forward strength and momentum that he had no choice but to backpedal out into the rain.

With Wile E watching eagerly from the doorway, we made our way out into the courtyard where we'd first faced him back on that very first day—only now we were fighting with each other instead. Sparks flew and sizzled as the rain turned them to dust and mud splattered against our clothes with each new step. Bugs sliced at my abdomen and I bent back to avoid it, retaliating with a quick kick to the chest. Bugs stumbled back towards the bamboo forest and recovered just in time to save his ears from getting hacked clean off.

We squared up, right out into the middle of the forest, between the trees, over the rocks, and eventually straight down the side of the mountain. The energy bouncing back and forth between us was strong enough at that very moment to electrify the entire globe ten times over for the next three years straight without a single break in the chain. We were, in fact, doing battle as if we were mortal enemies—just as Wile E had instructed us to do. Yet I truly had no clue how we'd managed to summon such violent passion all at once and bring it straight out into the daylight like this, no less, without even so much as a prior argument.

So I began to consider—sporadically, as we dodged from left to right and back around all these towering bamboo stalks—that perhaps there was something deep inside the two of us instead—something we'd never seen before, but that we both somehow knew existed somewhere far in the backs of our minds, just out of our reach. Perhaps we shared a mutual hatred for one another that was just now beginning to erupt and bubble to the surface. Perhaps, deep down, we wanted nothing more than to see each other dead one day, preferably as a result of our own actions. There was really no way of placing it just yet. I'd have to wait until all of this was finally over.

Wile E was still watching, but keeping his distance now, staying out of our way.

My feathers were soaked now and caked with mud. My eyes were strained and my head felt as though it could split into two at any moment. Bugs was drenched to the bone with great streams of water shooting off his body at each new move. His ears were slicked back and I could see the breath escape his lungs in a thin, silvery white cloud each time he exhaled.

I sent my sword sailing at his right shoulder but hit nothing but air as he ducked beneath it, coming back up just in time to catch me with a solid kick to the stomach. My hands separated as I tumbled backwards—downhill—losing my balance. Just as conveniently, I lost my grip on the sword in the same exact manner and could do nothing but watch as it soared away from me, spinning like a boomerang, finally coming to rest impaled in the trunk of an unusually thick bamboo tree.

A few odd swishes later and I was lying on the ground, looking up at the very tip of Bugs's blade.

He had won.

Wile E applauded casually from where he stood, a little ways up the incline. Bugs craned his neck to look. "Good show." The coyote said, admittedly sounding a bit disappointed. "Good show."

Congratulations were in order for the big, gray rabbit, yet somehow I couldn't get past the murderous look that blazed uncharacteristically in his soft, normally placid, charcoal black eyes.

_End of Chapter Six._


	7. The Hunter

_Chapter Seven: **The Hunter**_

_White Pigeon, Michigan . . ._

"_Welcome to the Dead Duck's Winter Country Hunting Lodge!_" Read the huge, wooden sign above the door. I couldn't help but roll my eyes in disgust—and glee. What a joy it would be to shatter this old place's fine, fine reputation.

With my sword slung high up over my shoulder—still just as red as ever—I carefully turned the knob until it clicked and quietly pushed open the door. The rich scent of mahogany immediately entered my lungs as the door swung open to reveal the lodge's expansive woodgrain interior. It wasn't real, I could tell, but it was real enough, surely, to create the atmosphere that its builders had obviously desired—a relaxing place for men to come and sit and make up stories about their latest hunt and all the innocent birds they'd unflinchingly slaughtered that week. I, myself, didn't care much for it, but I could learn to respect it nonetheless.

Slowly—cautiously—I stepped inside, wiping my webbed feet at the rug up front. Everything was quiet—a little too quiet, if you get my overused film reference. Thus, I removed my sword from its case and pressed further into the bowels of the beast, holding it at the ready.

Past the threshold, on the left, stretched a long set of spiral stairs—also made of wood—and, on the right, stood an empty bar counter with an old rotary phone built right into the wall. Pretty retro for a hunting lodge, I thought to myself. Out in front was a main room of sorts—a lounge perhaps—with big, fluffy armchairs and a crackling fireplace—gas, no doubt, but still a welcome addition—and a rug made of bearskin. There was nobody to be seen.

I let my sword fall to my side and took a few more leisurely steps inside, only to be confronted, instead, by a tall wall of trophies. And by trophies, I don't actually mean "trophies," per se. I mean heads—hundreds of heads belonging to hundreds of dead ducks and geese and other assorted fowls—sometimes entire bodies even—mounted on plaques against the wall like it wasn't really as repulsive as it looked. It was—and my blood boiled just thinking of the scum that had perpetrated this mess on the forests of the world. Elmer Fudd was one of them. He'd be the first to learn his lesson, going down in history as the only hunter ever killed by the very animal he was hunting in the first place. Maybe if I were lucky, I'd meet a few of his comrades along the way. That way, he wouldn't have to be so embarrassed by it.

Just then, the phone rang from the bar on my right, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was a loud, angry ring, with a certain buzz to it that must've—I thought—driven the bartender crazy listening to it all day. Impulsively, as if I'd been waiting to do so my entire life, I crossed over to the counter and lifted the receiver in the midst of a second furious, piercing ring, and shouted:

"Who the hell is it?"

Silence—as if the other line had suddenly gone dead. My eyes narrowed. Somebody was breathing—loud, a little disappointedly. It was like a repeated sigh over and over again, with a slight whistle in the background, sliding almost rhythmically to and fro. I wanted desperately to hang up—I should've—yet somehow I just couldn't bring myself to do it—frozen, like a deer in the headlights.

"Who is it?" I repeated, this time with a tinge of timidity.

A few more dry, lifeless seconds ticked by before the phone finally came crackling to life, and an all-too-familiar voice erupted into my ear. "Hello, Daffy." It said, sounding hollow and ghostlike above all else.

"Hello, Bugs." I muttered in reply. "Nice to hear from you."

I could hear him chuckling almost wickedly on the other line. "You too." He mused with mock enthusiasm. "Say, ya' wouldn't happen to know where Elmer is right now, would ya'? I was just gonna ask him a quick question—ya' know—about his recipe for plum-glazed duck. I don't know about you, but I've been _dyin'_ to have some lately."

My hands balled into fists. "Sorry, but I just got here." I growled.

"Oh, well in that case, I won't keep ya'. I'm sure you've got plenty o' stuff to take care of, am I right? Nice talkin' to ya', though." He laughed again. "Have a wonderful life."

I slammed the phone back down on the cradle and took a deep breath to clear my head. He would get his soon enough, no matter how sickeningly brash he was. Plum-glazed duck—maybe so, but with a bowl of rabbit stew on the side. I couldn't help but smile.

He didn't have to lie. I knew he was calling to warn Elmer that I was coming. He'd probably call Foghorn now instead, trying to save as many soldiers as he possibly could—not that it would help him in the long run.

Regardless, Bugs wasn't my main concern at the moment. He couldn't be, not while Elmer Fudd was still out there—lurking around in the snow-stained pine forest back behind the lodge—still breathing, still hunting, his very existence insulting me with each new beat of his shriveled, old heart.

I looked up from where I stood. Behind the bar, taped to the refrigerator, was a note. I leaned over the counter to read it:

"_Taz—  
Gone hunting with Porky, Sam, and Marvin. Meet us outside around 3:00.  
Follow the footprints.  
—Elmer_"

It would seem that Elmer was planning quite the party, and expecting a fourth guest, no less—one who would almost certainly devour the very letter that had been addressed to him. But none of that mattered. No amount of assistance could stop me now. Not today.

* * *

_Eleven hours earlier . . ._

It didn't take long—after Bugs and I had departed from Wile E's spiritual boot camp deep in the mountains of China—for the coyote himself to come to terms with his own vulnerability. For, soon after we'd left, it is said that Wile E grew quite lonely upon returning to his old, forgotten life of exile. Some even go so far as to suggest that he may have even attempted suicide.

Naturally, Warner Bros.—whom he'd once despised (for reasons that, to this day, remain unknown)—was quick to capitalize upon his misery—one of Hollywood's finer traits, no doubt—and immediately ordered him onto a nonstop flight right back to America. A few conference calls, press meetings, and contract signings later, and Wile E was making cartoon shorts right alongside the rest of us.

I never once spoke to him—or even saw him around the studio for that matter—yet he always somehow managed to make his presence felt; probably through the enormous amounts of money his cartoons raked in, or the excessive popularity he had so spontaneously achieved without ever even uttering a word on camera. I was never really jealous, although I'm quite sure I could've been just as easily. But there was a certain something in the way that Wile E conducted himself around that office that never once felt threatening or at all even important. In fact, it was slightly embarrassing—more so for him than it was for us, although we felt it just the same.

But Wile E and I were quite different from each other—and we both knew that—and that's exactly why the next time we actually conversed with each other didn't come until many years later—well after my death and rebirth—in a sushi bar somewhere in downtown Chicago where he _just so happened_ to be the chef.

For most of us, Warner's collapse at the hands of Bugs Bunny and his evil ACME empire had been a tragedy of sorts. For Wile E, however, it had been a blessing. No longer would he be forced to humiliate himself in their name. Instead, now, he was only humiliating himself in his _own_ name, pressing deep into the heart of the service industry, just as Pepé had before him. Although it's safe to say, I think, that Wile E didn't get nearly as many customers, which, in this case, was a good thing.

No sooner had I shoved open the thick, hardwood door and waltzed right in through the threshold than a fist, covered in thinning brown fur, launched itself at my head. It came from my right, surprisingly enough, at the speed of sound, or so it seemed—so fast, I thought, that it must've been destined to send my beak spinning all around my skull. But, then again, I was never _that_ easy to take down.

I seized Wile E by the wrist and twisted his forearm with such force that he was sent spiraling to the floor.

"No, no, no." I muttered, jamming my gun in his face. "Not today, old buddy."

His chest heaving up and down, he looked up at me through broken black eyes, a mixture of shock and awe written deep within his wrinkles. I didn't flinch, and I most certainly didn't feel remorse. After all, I didn't have time for any more self-righteous teachings and life lessons from an animal who could barely keep a hold on his _own_ existence. He had been foolish, at the very least, to expect patience from an extremely impatient person, and now he was under _my_ control.

"I'm here for one thing and one thing only." I went on. "After I'm finished, you can wallow in shame all you want, but now is not the time."

Grimacing, his brief moment of weakness quickly coming to pass, he sent a swift kick up and at me, hoping to swat the pistol from my grasp. Unfortunately for him, however, he was only playing with fire. My foot met his far before the halfway mark and stopped him in mid-formation.

"You remember what you told me about _myself_ all those years ago?" I asked almost rhetorically, pressing down with my foot and forcing his knee into his chest. He squealed in agony. "Do you?" I asked again.

He shook his head.

"No?" I interpreted. "Well I sure do. In fact, I remember _exactly_ what you said—word for word." I paused at that moment, as though expecting him to suddenly remember it himself. "You said, "When you reach your full potential you will be _unstoppable._" " I reminded him with a smirk. "Well guess what, Wile E? I _have_ reached my full potential. That's why I'm here right now, and that's why _you're_ down there on the floor."

"What do you want?" He inquired through gritted teeth.

For a long time I didn't say a word. Then—slowly, and with careful pronunciation—I truthfully answered his question. "I want my sword back."

* * *

"Sushi?" Wile E asked innocently as I sat down at the counter.

My first instinct had been, naturally, to decline his offer, yet somehow I decided against it. "Yeah, sure. Why not?"

He nodded politely. "Very good." And with that, he reached below the bar and removed a large, black, cardboard box and set it down before me on the counter. "Take your pick." He advised, pulling back the cover.

I shrugged. There were at least thirty pieces left. "Do you have a fork or something?" I asked.

Without answering, he handed me a pair of chopsticks, which I eventually accepted—albeit reluctantly—with a frown.

"So," he began analytically, "_you_ want your sword back."

Slowly, my mouth full of wet, tasteless sushi, I nodded.

"And what makes you so sure that I even have it here?" He queried, his hands clasped together. "No—better yet—what makes you so sure that I would even give it to you if I had it?"

I gulped down the lackluster seaweed and fish at the back of my tongue and fixed my eyes back on the endlessly stubborn coyote in front of me. "You once told me," I began, "that _that_ particular sword had a . . . power . . . over you. I find it a little hard to believe that you would just toss it right into the trash the very second I left." I set down the chopsticks and picked up the Desert Eagle I'd placed on the counter instead. "And as far as your second question goes," I continued, fingering the safety mechanism, "I never said anything about _giving._ I said I _wanted_ it back, and I intend to _get_ it back whether you _give_ it to me or not."

Wile E eyed me suspiciously. "So angry." He muttered. "Tell me, why is it that you need that sword so badly? Why now?"

I sighed heavily. "There really isn't enough time for me to explain."

"There's plenty of time, Daffy." He assured me. "Go ahead."

"Fine." I groaned, rolling my eyes. "About a year-and-a-half ago, I was filming a cartoon in L.A. that required some pretty heavy stunt work and a whole lot of rigging for explosives and gunshots—dangerous stuff, basically."

"Go on."

"Well, the guns were all supposed to fire blanks, but, for some reason, one of them didn't. The bullet only grazed me, but the cut was bad enough to put me in the hospital for a couple of days, and when I finally got out, my attorneys were all pretty excited. They told me I should sue the company that supplied all our props—the ACME Corporation—for damages. My agent didn't like the idea, but I went ahead with it anyway."

"Oh, yes." Wile E mused. "I remember now."

"Yeah, I know. The media jumped all over it." I took another bite of sushi, picking it up with my fingers this time. "ACME lost about half its clients. Although, public opinion of me didn't get much better either." I paused, gulping down the rest of the fish. "So . . . I thought everything was going just fine," I continued, "and then, one day, I was sitting alone at home and . . . "

"And what?"

"A few _certain individuals_ felt it was their duty to . . . _get me out of the way_. I'd rather not go into the details right now, but . . . let's just say they put me in a coma for nearly twelve whole months."

"And now," Wile E murmured, finishing the story for me, "you want revenge."

I didn't have to tell him. It was written all over my face.

"Who _were_ these people—the ones that attacked you? Did you know them?"

"I thought I did." I answered smartly.

His eyes lit up. "The two that came with you to the mountain—were they involved?"

"Them and three others." I said grimly.

Wile E bit his lip. "And do you know why?"

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Apparently," I began, staring down at the counter, "Bugs had become CEO over at ACME a few years before that. I don't know how—or how he managed to keep it under wraps for so long—but nobody knew about it. I guess he didn't want me fucking with his profit margins."

"No," Wile E shook his head, "He may be arrogant, but he's certainly not materialistic. It must've been something else. How did he get the others involved?"

"Paid 'em all off, I guess. I've already spoken to one of 'em. That's what _he_ told me."

"Did you kill him?"

I glanced back up at him. "No, no, _I_ didn't kill him. He's dead, but _I _didn't kill him. It was . . . somebody else—shot him in the head."

"But you _would've_ killed him . . . if you'd had the chance . . . right?"

I hesitated. "He got what he deserved. Doesn't matter that it didn't come from me."

"Oh, come on, Daffy," he scoffed, "do you really believe that?" I didn't. "Maybe it's better that you didn't kill him. Maybe that means you haven't gone too far . . . yet."

"Too far to what?"

Wile E stood up straight. "To stop."

I grimaced. "No, I can't let what those five did to me go unanswered. I can't."

"I know _exactly_ how you feel." He said softly. "I once felt the very same way. But revenge, as satisfying as it may be in the present, will only consume you in the future. It will not restore order to your world."

"Order is something my world can live without."

His eyes narrowed. "No it isn't. If you devote your life to such an emotional ideal as revenge—and if you do, in fact, succeed in exacting it upon your enemies—in the end you will have nothing left to live for, and your life will come to an untimely end because of it."

"The way I see it," I retorted, "my life's _already_ come to an "untimely end," and I won't be able to heal _myself_ until I deal with _them._ I'm not the same duck I once was."

"I can tell." He agreed. "You've most certainly changed, although not necessarily for the better."

"Look," I growled, "I wish I had the time to indulge you for the rest of the afternoon, but I don't. I really don't. All I want is my sword, and then I'll be out of here, okay? So let's just try and accomplish that first."

"Daffy, I'm more than willing to let you walk out of here with that thin piece of steel in your hand," he replied, "but at the same time, as your teacher and as your . . . friend," an uncomfortable pause, "I must _urge_ you to reconsider."

That made me sigh long and hard. "Wile E," I said finally, "it's too late. I've already made up my mind."

An unfortunate frown caused his cheeks to droop. "Very well then." He murmured somberly. "I'll go get it for you."

* * *

_Back in White Pigeon . . ._

They began as a small group of tiny black splotches—fast approaching—far off across a wide-open clearing, starkly contrasted against the heavenly whiteness of the snow-flooded forest floor. I stood propped up against a nearby pine tree, using the handle of my sword as a cane and sucking intensely on the plain-white tip of an unfiltered cigarette.

A few lengthy, uneventful minutes ticked by as they continued their solemn approach—like tiny little action figures marching blearily along beneath the sharp confines of the lucid horizon—towards me. Oddly enough, I wasn't the least bit anxious. Sylvester had been the pick to break the ice. Now I was brimming with confidence. Part of me knew that, no matter how much firepower Elmer Fudd was toting along with him on this day of days, he would, most certainly, be the next to fall regardless.

Today, I noticed, he was accompanied by Porky Pig, Marvin the Martian and Yosemite Sam, all of whom were manhandling massive shotguns (except, of course, for Marvin, whose laser pistol did quite well on its own) and hoisting big bags of what I presumed was dead game over their shoulders, which they promptly dropped upon recognizing me.

They were still quite far away when they came to a grinding halt in the middle of the field. It was as though someone had suddenly pushed the 'pause' button on the VCR. The snow falling angelically from the sky might as well have frozen, too, in its place. For a moment, then, they exchanged uneasy glances and a few words—none of which I could understand—before finally turning, once again, to face me, and marching. I flicked my spent and frost bitten cigarette to the side and stood up straight.

"Well, my God, look who it is!" I cried with mock enthusiasm. "Elmer Fudd and associates in the very _last_ place I'd expect to find them!"

Mr. Fudd himself didn't look too impressed. "And who do we have hewe?" He retorted, plainly butchering all his 'R's and 'L's. "Wooks wike Thanksgiving dinnew to me. Wight, fewwas?"

There was a general concurrence among his three companions.

"Damn straight!" Yosemite Sam exclaimed from somewhere beneath the shadowy brim of his enormous cowboy hat. "This un' looks juicy too!"

"Very funny, guys." I remarked casually, taking a few daring steps forward. "Then I assume you all know why I'm here."

"Oh, of _course_ we do, Dodgers." Marvin replied rather matter-of-factly. "Elmer wasn't the least bit conservative regarding the details."

"Listen, Marv," I scolded him, "it's Daffy, not Dodgers, okay? You think you could try and work it through that thick helmet of yours?"

His eyes fell half-lidded. "_Nevertheless,_" he continued, visibly annoyed, "we've all managed to come to an agreement."

"Really? And what might that be?"

"Well, D—D—D—Daffy," Porky piped up, "one of the first things we d—d—d—decided was th—th—th—that none of us really l—l—l—li—li—li—uh—_care for_ you."

"And that's putting it lightly." Marvin went on. "I, for one, absolutely _detest_ you, and, I must say, right now your attitude is making me _very angry._"

"So, let me get this straight," I analyzed, "the only reason that the four of you are friends is because you all hate me? Is that it?"

"No, that's not it." Elmer explained. "Fiwst and fowemost, we'we fwiends because we wove to hunt. Especiawwy duwing duck season." He paused only to cackle profusely. "I knew you'd come aftew me soonew ow latew, so I made some fwiends that wouwd suppowt me. You know—kill two biwds with one stone. I've been waiting fow this day to come fow a wong, wong time now."

"So have we!" Sam exploded. "That's why this time yer' goin' away fer' good!"

"Well then," I taunted, "I hope you've got a lot more than just seventeen shots with you."

"Oh, don't wowwy about that." Elmer said assuredly. "Boys!"

Sam, Marvin, and Porky responded immediately, tossing down their weapons and pulling open, instead, the enormous burlap bags they'd each slung over their shoulders. Elmer could only smirk as the three of them emerged with all manner of assault machine guns in their dirty little hands—Marvin with an M16, Sam with an AR-15, and Porky with the classic yet deadly AK-47.

"And now we witness," Elmer Fudd gloated, "in aww its gwowy, the _execution—_finawwy—of Daffy Dumas Duck."

The hunter and I never broke our gaze, even as his three perpetual sidekicks stepped eagerly forward to unload upon me with an ill-conceived shower of flaming hot lead. There was a certain weariness in my eyes that shocked him, I think, and took him slightly aback. It was a strange, cold look, most often conjured up by convicted felons in the wake of their unflattering and, for all intensive purposes, useless mug shots. It was as though nothing he could ever do, no matter how sick and relentless and merciless and torturous, could ever affect or even impress me in the slightest. And, in a way, it was true.

There was a vibrant clamoring of noise as Porky, Marvin, and Sam depressed the triggers on their automatic weapons and three simultaneous explosions ignited the air in front of them. Smoke billowed restlessly all about them as dozens of spent and steaming hot shells piled up at their feet. Before long, in fact, they couldn't see anything, and they were left, instead, to fire unpityingly into a massive cloud of shadows and haze.

When their guns had finally tired of themselves, each emitting a sharp and emphatic _click_ to signal, clearly, that their clips were now empty, the three of them allowed their arms to slowly fall to their sides as the smoke cleared before them.

They all expected, I knew, to see one thing and one thing only through the mist: myself, lying dead in a pool of blood, the snow melted all around me, and my body riddled with bullets. What a shame.

I hadn't originally intended to shatter their expectations, yet, at the same time, I hadn't had much of a choice.

No, I was _not_ lying dead in a pool of my own blood. _Instead,_ I was standing—very much alive—with my arm extended and the tip of my sword facing outwards. At my feet—which were, admittedly, a bit cold from remaining planted firmly in the snow—were several thousand tiny scraps of shrapnel, still letting off steam. And so, my enemies learned on that day of days, a very valuable lesson—one that they would most certainly never forget:

My sword was swift, even in the fog.

Elmer grimaced furiously—bearing his teeth—and turned to face his companions. "Kiww him." He commanded.

None of them moved.

"Kiww him!" He repeated, a little more forcefully.

For a moment, then, the three of them exchanged uneasy glances. They'd heard him just right the first time, yet they were more than a little reluctant to pit themselves—even all at once—against an opponent who'd just somehow managed to cut his way through hundreds of rapidly approaching bullets.

"I said kiww him, you mowons!" Elmer exploded, blind with rage.

Flinching a little, Marvin was the first to act, tossing down his M16 and yanking a long, relatively wide, and heavily serrated machete from his 'utility belt.' Porky and Sam followed suit, unsheathing two enormous knives of their own and eyeing me dangerously.

I allowed my left hand to sneak in under my right, gripping tighter on the handle of my sword, as the three of them slowly crept forward. The snow came down harder and Elmer turned his head towards the sky, as if to ask God for assistance. Little did he know, though, that God was already on _my_ side.

Porky threw himself at me, swiping clumsily at my head, thereby leaving me open to duck right past him—slicing into his stomach like a rusty razorblade as I went—and countering both Marvin and Sam—simultaneously—on the upswing. Steel met steel with a shrill and high-pitched squeal as a plethora sparks erupted in the air before us. Porky fell to his knees, a look of terror and agony cut deep into his face as he watched his own blood spill out onto the snow in front of him. A few seconds later and he'd collapsed in a heap, surrounded by gore, as Elmer Fudd looked on complacently.

A well-placed kick sent Sam staggering backward as Marvin and I engaged in a short, yet wholly straightforward duel of our own—my sword dodging left and right and his taking each scarring blow as we danced back and forth. It didn't take long, however, for Sam to regain his composure. Dashing up behind me, he made a move as if to stab me in the back, only to be deflected as my own sword crept swiftly over my shoulder and honed in for the block. With that taken care of, I spun around, and in one lightning-quick swipe, sent Sam's hat flying right off his head. Seizing the moment, Marvin sprang at me from behind and wrapped his arms around my throat while his legs took hold of my abdomen, pulling me to the ground. Luckily, however, my momentum enough that I could easily swing my feet up and over my head, thereby squirming out of the Martian's grasp and landing—rather perfectly at that—behind him. Sitting bolt upright in astonishment, Marvin never had the chance to realize his own mistake. Like a runaway freight train, my sword tore speedily through his neck and sent his head spiraling to the ground in the midst of a second tall, brutal shower blood—except, this time, it was green.

Pulling his enormous cowboy hat back down over his head, Yosemite Sam leapt to his feet with an evil smirk and charged at me, holding his knife high up in the air and bouncing up and down on every step. A few moments later, however, he'd been subdued. With both of his arms missing and a long, jagged scar traversing diagonally down and across his chest, he fell—silent and lethargic—into the comforting arms of the vanilla-white snow, instantly painting it a dark shade of red.

Slowly looking up from the sordid array of carnage all around me, my eyes glanced back and forth, anxiously examining my immediate surroundings. Elmer Fudd was nowhere to be seen. His footsteps, however, still showed up clear, and could be seen moving deep into the forest, vanishing somewhere far off on the horizon—in between the trees.

* * *

Breathing heavily, Elmer came to a labored halt in the center of an overgrown, narrow patch of pine trees and plopped himself down on a nearby log, dropping his shotgun into his lap. He let out a long sigh of relief and even allowed himself a chuckle or two. He couldn't rest long, he knew, but for the moment, at least, he figured he'd escaped certain death. As long as he kept moving, there wouldn't be any immediate danger. _Nobody_ would be able to track him _this_ far into the forest.

He'd make his way out of the trees as quickly as he could, and then he'd have to find Bugs. It was the only way. At this point, that fucking rabbit was his only hope for survival. He was the only one that could keep him safe. The only problem was . . . he had no idea where Bugs was at the moment. He shouldn't have been too hard to find, though, Elmer assured himself. Ever since the 'incident' the year before, Bugs had done his best to disappear off the face of the Earth. Unfortunately, he'd also conjured up a few too many loose-lipped connections for his own good, and they'd surely be able to drop in a few tips on his location.

Elmer checked his wristwatch. It was almost three o'clock. Taz should be showing up pretty soon, he reminded himself. Whether or not that was actually a good thing, however remained to be seen. If Taz could find him—by following his scent maybe—he might be able to act as some small form of protection . . . at least for the time being. After all, he _was_ a damn good 'attack dog,' no matter how much noise he made.

Speaking of noise, was that the sound of a twig breaking he'd just heard? Hastily jumping to his feet, Elmer meekly cocked his shotgun and glanced around nervously, a cold sweat breaking out all across his forehead.

"T—Taz?" He whimpered hopefully. "Is that you?"

No reply—not even from the birds.

"Daffy?" His voice was trembling now. "Daffy, if that's you out thewe," he hesitated, choosing his words carefully, "I—I just want to teww you that . . . that I'm sowwy. I'm weawwy, weawwy sowwy, Daffy." Slowly realizing how horribly pathetic he sounded, he allowed himself to trail off without so much as another word.

It only took a few short minutes of silence, however, for him to quickly reverse his decision.

"Wook," he drawled on annoyingly, "if you wet me go now, I'ww nevew bothew you again. I'ww—I'ww go so faw away . . . it'ww be just wike I _was_ dead, bewieve me."

Still no answer, and slowly his shoulders began to droop. He let out another long, agonizing sigh.

"You'we not even out thewe, awe you?" He inquired rather abstractly. "I'm just scawing mysewf now, awen't I?"

Seeing as there were no immediate signs to the contrary, he allowed himself, then, to lower his gun—albeit cautiously—and take a seat, once more, on the hollowed-out log lying dormant on the ground beside him.

He was only freaking himself out, he knew. And those were the last thoughts that went through his head before it split cleanly in half.

I landed soundlessly on the ground behind him, looking up just in time to glimpse his entire body, from the waist up, as it fell into two separate pieces right where it had sat, sliced vertically, right down the middle. That tree branch had been the perfect vantage point.

So now, the second man on my list was dead. He hadn't had much of a chance to defend himself, I realized, and I almost felt sorry for him. _Almost._ After all, he'd wronged me in a way worse than murder. He'd taken my life away without even allowing me to die. What left was there for me to do but to wander the globe like an anguished ghost, progressively haunting all the souls that had once tormented me?

A low growl from behind brought me screaming back to reality. I spun around just in time to catch the Tasmanian Devil speeding towards me in a whirlwind of snow and empty pine needles, howling madly having witnessed his master's own seppuku. It was nothing, however, that a couple of bullets couldn't handle.

_End of Chapter Seven._


	8. The Teacher

_Chapter Eight: **The Teacher**_

In the case of my mission, convenience had taken an errant backseat to whimsy, leading me to seek out my enemies in the order to which they'd each offended me—ranking, naturally, from lowest to highest—rather than in the order of their geographical location. Thus, immediately after laying waste to Elmer Fudd and each of his proverbial sidekicks, I booked a flight straight back to Los Angeles, hailed a lonely cab driver, and set off to Arizona where I'd then dealt—admittedly, rather plainly—with Foghorn Leghorn. And, just like that, my list had shrunken to two.

Now I was in the final stretch. I could see the finish line clearly up ahead and I could almost taste the bitter sense of victory in my mouth. Lola Bunny—she would be my next target, and almost certainly my most interesting one to date. It had always puzzled me why _she,_ of all 'toons, had joined with Bugs to take me down. In the short time that I'd known her—which, truthfully, had been very short indeed—she had always seemed as though she could barely stand to even _look_ at Bugs, let alone assist him in murder. They'd been divorced for many years—ever since her departure, in fact, from Muztag Mountain so long ago—so why had _she,_ all of a sudden, become an accessory to this fatal soap opera of death and deception? It made no sense, yet I was certain that I would find all the answers to my questions and more once I'd confronted her.

My bloodstained clothes, I'd noticed, were beginning to attract unwanted attention. Once, I remembered, they'd been as white as snow, hanging limply in an empty closet in the back of Pepé's Pub, as though they'd been waiting specifically for me. Since then, however, they'd become caked with the dried, crimson-red blood of my various vanquished antagonists, and I felt, therefore, that it was time, perhaps, to purchase some new threads—specifically, ones that wouldn't stain quite so easily.

I made my leisurely way, then, from Foghorn Leghorn's brazenly rundown gas station/convenience store, deep in the dust of the Arizona Desert, all the way back to the smog-strangled glow of glitzy, old Los Angeles, California, where I'd then proceeded to—wait for it—do a little shopping. My final decision, as far as clothes went, was, oddly enough, strikingly similar to what I'd originally worn—except, this time, all in black. Coupled, then, with the color of my feathers, I looked almost like a Ninja, yet still without shoes—more for the simple fact that they rarely fit me than the quote-unquote "aesthetic" of it. After all, it wasn't easy being a duck. I lisped, for instance, _not_ because of a speech impediment, but because, in fact, I had no teeth. Instead, I had a beak—and an extremely loyal one at that.

So, then, with my appearance slightly altered—and looking a bit more presentable—I set out to find the very last thing I'd need before I could take my vengeance out on Lola: _information._

_

* * *

_

"Good evening, gentlemen, and welcome to Tex Avery's Classic American Eatery." The waitress proclaimed from memory. "My name is Betty Boop and I'll be your server for tonight." Without so much as an embarrassed blush, she removed, quite suddenly, a small, fairly compact notebook from between her breasts and a pen as well. "Have either of you ever eaten here at Avery's before?"

Felix was slow to respond, his eyes lost vehemently in Betty's rather voluptuous upper-body proportions, to which she didn't seem to mind. "I—I have, but he hasn't." He finally managed to choke out, gesturing across the table at me.

"Oh," she replied, casting a friendly smile in my direction, "I don't have to explain anything then. Makes my job easier."

I laughed a bit, though I hadn't actually found it all that funny.

"So, can I start you two off with some drinks?" She inquired, returning to script.

"Just a glass of water for me would be fine." I said politely, glancing across the table. "And my friend here will have the same . . . maybe with a little extra ice."

She didn't bother writing it down. "Thank you. I'll be back for your orders." She confirmed, turning on her heels and marching back towards the kitchen in search of the nearest waterspout.

"Pretty hot, huh?" Felix observed after she'd left. "I told you this place was nice."

It'd been Sylvester's influence, I knew, that had allowed Felix to retain so many of his boyish, adolescent hormones, even at a time like this. Although, that wasn't to say that she _hadn't_ been attractive. Quite the contrary, in fact, despite her enormous head and pencil-thin frame. I, however, wasn't one to dwell upon it. After all, I'd already been married once. It hadn't worked out—partly because of my immensely egotist attitude, and partly because of her reluctance to appease it—but, nevertheless, it _had_ happened. Felix, on the other hand, had never experienced that kind of commitment before, which allowed him, then, to think only in terms of himself.

"Yeah, she's alright." I conceded, leaning back a little, or, rather, as far as the booth would allow.

"_Alright?_" He repeated. "Come on, man, you need to lighten up." I almost laughed at that. Felix's nose was still wrapped in bandages, I could see. I figured I must've broken it back at the nightclub before taking on Sylvester.

"Look," I said flatly, "I didn't come here for the peep show, Felix, I came here for the information that only _you_ have."

"Information? What information?"

"You know," I prodded, glancing anxiously to my left and right, "about Lola Bunny."

"What about her?" Felix asked, genuinely puzzled.

"Sylvester already told me that she's a teacher, and that she lives in New York. Now I just need to know _where_ in New York, and at what school she teaches." I paused, then, allowing him to think it over. "You _must've_ overheard something." I said assuredly.

Felix bit his lip. "I think I might remember him saying _something_ about it." He answered after a long period of silence.

"_What?_" The anticipation was almost too much.

He pondered that for a few seconds more, and then, finally, "Giffen Memorial School. In Albany."

A wave of relief instantly swept over me. I'd been assured that Lola would know Bugs's whereabouts, and so finding her was really, in essence, the last leg of my adventure. I'd often wondered if killing a teacher would put a dent, at all, in my admittedly unforgiving conscience. After careful contemplation, however, I'd eventually decided that, no, it would not. I was more of a primal beast now than a civilized creature. Murder didn't bother me as long as it was justified. After all, it wasn't as though I'd never shown compassion, now, was it? Felix was still alive, and the same went for Pepé and Wile E. Those that had lent me a helping hand along the way had all survived, and _that_ would _never_ change.

"Your waters." Betty Boop said silkily, sidling up to the table and placing our drinks before us. She returned, then, to her notepad and inquired rather uncaringly, "Have you decided yet or do you need a few extra minutes to make up your mind?"

"Uh, no, I think we're alright." Felix muttered, hastily scanning up and down the menu. "I—I think I'll have the smoked salmon. What about you, Daffy?"

My eyes went slyly from the waitress to the cat and back again. "What's the most expensive thing you've got on the menu?"

She took a moment to think it over, chewing on the tip of her pen. "That would be the crab-stuffed lobster smothered in Jack Daniel's sauce. Forty-two dollars."

"I'll go with that." I told her, handing over my menu.

"Thank you." She said again with a brief smile before traipsing off to report our orders to the chef.

"Have fun with the bill." I remarked casually, gulping down my water and squirming my way out of the booth.

Felix's mouth dropped open. "Hey, you could've at least left some money for the tip!" He cried as the door slammed shut behind me.

* * *

_Albany, New York . . ._

The principal's office was long and angular, with an enormous wooden desk protruding incongruently from the wall and a young, slightly overweight woman—a rabbit, specifically—seated lazily behind it, a nail file twiddling between her fingers. The nameplate in front of her read—with some degree of pride, I might add—"_Honey Bunny, Resident Secretary._" She was pretty for a rabbit, I told myself, and her soft, gray fur—although strikingly similar to that of Bugs Bunny—was attractive nonetheless.

Her eyes slid gently up to meet my own as I approached through the entranceway and across the rough, cheaply shaven carpet towards her desk.

"May I help you?" She asked quietly. Her voice was as smooth as butter, I noticed, yet with a certain inflection of professionalism that struck me as odd for some reason that I couldn't quite yet come to identify.

"Yes, I suppose you could." I replied carefully. "I'm here to see a _Ms. Lola Bunny._ Would you happen to know which room she's in?"

"Of course—room three-five-one. But," she paused, "what do you need to _see _her for?"

I almost choked. "Excuse me?"

"Ms. Bunny's asked that we _confirm_ each and every visitor coming in to see her. It's a hassle, sir, I know, but she says it's for her own safety, and I don't ask questions."

"Her own safety?" I repeated, as though it were preposterous. "Safety from what?"

"I just told you, sir," she replied, "I don't ask questions. In the meantime, however, I'm going to need to know your name and your purpose of visit."

"My name?" The truth shall set you free, I told myself. After all, there was almost nothing left, at this point, to hide from. "Daffy Dumas Duck." I answered straightly. "And I'm here to _kill_ Ms. Bunny."

For a moment, then, neither of us said a word. My face remained expressionless, ready to exploit whatever response I should receive, while hers, on the other hand, cycled through several before finally coming to rest on a sardonic smile.

"Very funny, sir." She said finally. "I think I get your drift. What exactly does she need all this security for anyway? You can go on up. Oh, and if you see her, tell her to get her _own_ fucking message-taker, 'cause I've just about _had it_ down here."

"Will do." I smiled. "Will do."

* * *

Class was, apparently, still in session in room three-five-one as the door was closed and the lights were on. A highly colorful sign above the door read, in great cardboard-cutout letters, "_Ms. Bunny, Fourth Grade Language Arts._" I smiled. This would be easy.

With my sword at my side, sheathed and polished, I crept up to the door, remaining at least an arm's length away at all times, and knocked—_tap, tap, tap, tap_.

A few seconds later, it swung open, and there she stood—Lola Bunny—tall and stiff as a statue with an authentic teacher's frown on her face. It was immediately erased, however, to make room for the shocked, puzzled, and regretful look, then, that followed, right on its heels. Her mouth fell open as her eyes slowly took in my form, sliding back and forth and up and down my body as though she thought they must've been playing tricks on her.

"H—how did you get in here?" She stammered, neglecting all potential superfluous niceties.

"Honey would like you to get your _own_ fucking message-taker." I replied without so much as a grin.

A long pause. "So . . . you're here to kill me, then? Is that it? Daffy, I . . . " she trailed off, " . . . I—I'm sorry. I—I can't tell you how terrible I feel—everyday, waking up and knowing what I did." She swallowed hard. "You didn't deserve that. Nobody deserves that—and I hate myself for having taken part in it."

My eyes fell half-lidded. "You know, I've been hearing that an awful lot lately."

"That's because it's the truth!" She snapped, as though she were hurt that I didn't believe her. "Sylvester, Elmer, and Foghorn might not have meant it, but I do. I've _always_ meant it, Daffy. Honestly."

"So you know, then," I said, "about the others."

"Oh, of course I know, Daffy, of course I know. Bugs told me you'd be coming back." She murmured, looking away from me. "I told him I was ready."

"Really?" I almost laughed. "Is that why you've got the secretary playing Twenty Questions with everyone who comes in the building down there?"

"I wanted to make sure that I _knew_ when you were coming. That way, I'd be ready . . . to—to die." A soft, crystalline tear came rolling down her cheek. "I deserve it, Daffy. God knows I do. But—but now," her mouth fell silent, "I'm afraid you're going to have to wait."

"Wait?" I repeated with a snort. "Lola, do you have any idea how long I've been waiting already?"

"So what's another couple of minutes?" She asked, dabbing at her eyes. "Look," she went on with a sniff, "I know you're angry, and I understand that. Believe me. But right now, I've got a classroom full of children in there . . . and I really don't think that watching their own teacher getting hacked to bits right in front of them is the best way to top off an otherwise normal school day. Just wait—just a few more minutes—until the bell rings. Please. For their sake, not for mine."

I took a second or two to think it over. "I'll wait inside." I conceded.

For a moment, then, I could see, she looked downtrodden as she cast a pleading, almost wounded look at me and slowly licked her lips. "Alright." She said finally. "Just stand in the corner . . . and don't say anything."

With that, she turned and reopened the door to her classroom, leading me inside with a distinct shudder of fear and, perhaps, humiliation. Her students, I was surprised to find, were of all different makes, sizes, builds, shapes, colors, races, and species. Most of them, I noticed, were 'toons like Lola and myself—small, fragile, and wide-eyed—with a few "normal" humans tossed into the mix to fill in the gaps. They all looked up from their desks as I entered.

"Class," Lola said, sounding very much unlike herself, "I'd like you all to meet an old . . . friend of mine. His name is Daffy." Little to no response from the class. "So why don't you all make him feel at home and say hello? Wouldn't that be nice?"

"Hi, Daffy." They all droned in unison, apparently bored out of their minds.

"Hi." I returned the gesture.

"He and I have some _very_ important business matters to take care of," Lola explained, "so he's just going to stick around for a little while until the bell rings, okay, everybody?" Several of the kids nodded, therefore creating a consensus among the rest of the class. Lola made an attempt at a smile. "Good."

I allowed my eyes, then, to wander around the room for a moment, taking in all the separate faces and looks of each student. Two rabbits—a boy and a girl, one blue and one pink—sat up front, whispering back and forth and laughing to each other—like a miniature Bugs and Lola, I thought to myself, wondering if history would, again, repeat itself. Conversely, a young duckling—who looked astonishingly like me, I might add, excluding his greenish-hued feathers—sat towards the back with his head cradled limply in his hands and his eyes shut sleepily. This one, I told myself, was, without a doubt, the Daffy Duck of the future.

I watched, then, as he came to a few seconds later, reacting to a slight jab in the ribs perpetrated by his neighbor, a short, stocky pig of about the same age. He shook his head vigorously to free himself from the cool grip of unconsciousness and ran a hand through his feathers. His eyes focused, first and foremost—after he'd rubbed them—on me, standing there, all alone in the far corner of the room.

"Hey, I know you!" He cried suddenly, pointing an excited finger in my direction. "You're Daffy Duck!"

"If you'd been listening, Plucky," Lola responded quickly, before I could even attempt to open my mouth, "instead of sleeping, then you would've heard me when I first introduced him to the class."

"B—but, Ms. Bunny, that's—that's Daffy Duck!" He reiterated, turning to me. "You _are_ Daffy Duck, aren't you?"

Slowly, slightly taken aback, I nodded. He didn't even lisp.

"Really? Wow! I can't believe it!" He looked, for a moment, as though he were about to faint. "I—I'm your biggest fan! Seriously!"

"Surprise, surprise." Snickered the blue bunny at the front of the room.

Ignoring him, I allowed myself to smile a bit. "Thank you, Plucky." I replied. "That means a lot to me."

"Do you know Bugs Bunny?" Asked the pink rabbit, suddenly very interested.

"Know him?" I repeated. My stomach could've turned inside out. "I guess you could say that."

Plucky rolled his eyes. "_Who cares?_" He groaned.

"_I_ do!" The pink rabbit shot back. "Could you get me his autograph?" She pleaded, staring at me with bright, hopeful eyes. "Please? Have him write it out to Babs Bunny."

"_And_ Buster Bunny." The blue one added. "He's so funny."

It was strange to hear them talk about their idol as they did, completely oblivious to the fact that he was actually a cold-blooded killer, swindler, betrayer, and an overall criminally minded maniac who, I was sure, couldn't have possibly cared less about his millions of adoring fans—most especially these two.

"Actually," I answered, sounding genuinely regretful, "I kind of hate to be the one to tell you kids this, but—"

"Don't do it, Daffy." Lola interjected desperately. "Don't do it."

"Bugs is dead." I finished lightly. "It just happened today as a matter of fact."

Two separate expressions of complete and utter shock and horror came over Buster and Babs at that moment. Their mouths fell open and their eyes grew wide as they glanced back and forth at each other, barely able to believe such an alarming piece of news. It couldn't be true, they must've told themselves. Plucky, on the other hand, still somehow managed to remain loyal, folding his arms across his chest with a smirk and leaning back in his chair as if to say, "That's a shame," in a sarcastic sort of way.

Lola's reaction, however, was quite the opposite. "Don't lie to them, Daffy." She hissed. "This has nothing to do with them."

I edged closer to her desk. "I'm not lying."

"Yes you _are!_" She cried. "Babs, don't listen to him! Bugs is fine."

"Y—you know him too, Ms. Bunny?" The blue one—called Buster—whimpered disbelievingly.

I never gave her time to answer. "What do you care, Lola?" I growled, taking another slow step in her direction. "Why is he so important to you all of a sudden? I thought you hated him."

"W—what?" Stammered Babs, still not quite sure whether to cry or rejoice.

Lola grimaced. "I already told you, Babs, he's a liar. Don't listen to him."

"You know what?" I went on, as though I hadn't heard her. "I think we've waited just about long enough."

My sword was still sheathed when it collided with her throat, pinning her to the blackboard like a blue-ribbon science project and lifting her up off her feet. The entire class gasped in shock back behind me as I pushed down hard on both ends, slowly strangling her without so much as touching a hair on her head. She struggled for a moment, flailing her arms about and gasping for air before finally managing to grasp onto the handle of my sword and work her feet up to my stomach.

"You just . . . couldn't wait." She snarled laboriously, digging her high heels into my skin. She kicked, then, with all her might, and sent me tumbling down backwards, over the front of her desk, where I landed—flat on my face—on the hard, tile floor below, between two long rows of tables.

I looked up, then, just as all the kids looked down—just in time to see Lola, standing there, behind her desk, coughing and wheezing in her search for air. It didn't her long, however, to find it, at which point she pulled back her chair and yanked free something that had been fastened to the underside of one of the drawers. Once she'd leapt up on top of her desk, then, I could clearly make out what it was that she held in her hand. My eyes lit up. It was a sword—a Samurai sword at that—of her own. A worthy opponent? I asked myself. Probably not, but, then again, I wasn't looking for one just yet.

My palms flattened against the floor and I catapulted myself up and onto my knees just as Lola's sword came raining down upon me like a bolt of lightning. A shower of sparks accompanied the wincingly loud sting as our two blades clashed together.

"M—mom?" Came a small voice from somewhere on the other side of the room. Lola and I froze exactly where we stood.

"Yes, sugarplum?" She answered dryly after a long period of time. "What is it?"

"D—do you want us to leave?" Came the voice again, too low and frightened for me to recognize.

Lola didn't take the time, even, to think about it. "The bell hasn't rung yet, darling. School isn't over."

"I know, but you're—"

"You'll be fine, Babs." She said sternly. "Just keep your head down and you'll be fine."

Lola? A mother? I supposed it was possible, though it seemed unlikely. The pink rabbit, named Babs—an abbreviation, I presumed, for Barbara—_did,_ I had to admit, look an awful lot like Lola. But when, then, did she have the child? Ten years ago? Eleven, maybe? And with who?

Bugs—I knew it. She didn't have to tell me for me to figure it out. Who else could it have been?

She obviously hadn't scolded Babs out of her persistent idolization of Bugs Bunny, then, because, of course, he was her father. Lola was a reasonable 'toon, I knew, and she wouldn't have been one to force her daughter to hate him simply because _she_ hated him. I would've, but she wouldn't have. It wasn't her style.

The boy, however—Buster, as they called him—was more likely a friend than a brother, I thought. He didn't bear much resemblance to either Bugs or Lola, and it _was_ possible, all coincidences aside, for more than one rabbit to coexist in the same classroom.

"But what about you?" Babs murmured softly, looking as though she could pop right out of her chair at any moment.

"Don't worry about me, honey." Lola answered stiffly. "I'll be alright. Really."

Her blade cut down at my shoulder and I narrowly escaped, parrying her as I shuffled backwards, guiding both our swords in a circular swoop that caused the students closest to us to lean back intensely as the steel passed within an inch of their noses. Pushing down hard, I managed to lodge her sword in the surface of a nearby desk, only to leave myself open for a kick in the face as I raised my own sword high above my head. Nearly tripping over my own two feet, I stumbled further down the aisle of desks, past more startled students whose eyes were all wild with fear and edginess.

I regained my balance, then, just as Lola freed her sword from its wooden bindings and came after me with a slash, which I proceeded to deflect with relative ease. A few quick swipes later, however, and we were locked, once again in a shoving match. Unfortunately, having my heels to the wall and not enough leverage to force her back, she managed to push me much farther than I could ever manage to push her, and didn't stop until a trembling voice prodded us from close by:

"Uh . . . guys?" My eyes slid to the right. It was Plucky, and the tips of our swords were, literally, at his throat, despite being leaned back to the point, almost, of falling out of his chair, over the edge of the armrest. "Do you mind, maybe . . . backin' off a little bit?"

Lola grunted, breaking her eye contact with me. "Sorry, Plucky."

And, at that point, I took it as my cue to knock her back with yet another well-placed kick, which she accepted almost expectantly, falling back to the front of the class just as the bell rang shrilly in our ears. A swarm of kids, then, leapt, practically, from their seats, eager to escape the war zone they'd involuntarily been caught up in, creating a wall, of sorts, between us, which we could both see clearly over the crest of as they all filed hurriedly out of the classroom. Our eyes never broke away and our arms simply hung limply at our sides.

A gentle tap on the forearm made me look down with a start.

"Um, Daffy—Mr. Duck," Plucky stammered at my side, a pen and a particularly flamboyant picture of myself in his hands, "w—would you mind—if—if it's not too much trouble—would you mind, um, giving me your autograph?"

I almost rolled my eyes at the second mention of an autograph in less than five minutes. Why was it that a curly signature and a few too many underlines were so important to these kids? Seeing the sincerity in his face, however, I decided to save that thought for later and quickly snatched up the pen and the photo, which I proceeded, then, to scrawl my name across—albeit somewhat illegibly—before handing it back to him with a sort of "half-smile."

_His_ smile, on the other hand, was very much filled to the brim. "Thanks!" He grinned, as if I hadn't just, a few moments earlier, attacked his teacher. "My dad's never gonna believe this!" And with that, he hastily scrambled out of the classroom alongside everyone else.

_His_ dad, I thought. For a few fleeting seconds, then, I found myself wishing, almost, that _I_ had been that "dad" he'd spoken of.

My thoughts were, again, however, cut short as I caught a glimpse of Lola and her daughter, interlocked, almost, in a hug, beside each other at the front of the classroom. Babs was, at most, no more than half the size of Lola, forcing her mother, then, to kneel down in front of her simply for the two of them to speak eye-to-eye.

"Honey," Lola said soothingly, "I'm sorry, but—but we're not going to be able to go back home together—not today."

Babs looked crushed. "Why? Is it because of _him?_" She shot an accusing glance in my direction. "Why are you two fighting anyway? What's going on?"

Lola hesitated, allowing her eyes—so full of motherly love—to take in, slowly, every graceful aspect of her daughter's shape—from nose to toes. "I wish I could tell you, Babs." She answered finally. "I really do. But . . . the truth is, I'm afraid, that it would only hurt the both of us if I told you." True, I thought. She went on, then, in a whisper. "All you need to know is . . . that _you_ are the _only_ thing that matters to me in this world. The _only_ thing." She repeated. "And _that_ will never change, no matter _what_ you may come to think of me."

"You—you say that like—like we're never going to see each other again."

"Oh, no." Lola reassured her. "We _will_ see each other again. Someday. I promise."

"B—but what does that mean? Are—are you leaving—?"

Lola held a finger to Babs's lips, instantly silencing her, her eyes welling up, now, with tears. "Don't worry about me." She said. "Don't worry about me and where I'm going." She removed, then, a carefully folded letter, apparently handwritten, from her jacket pocket. "From now on, you're going to need to start thinking about yourself." She handed it over. "I want you to take this with you, Babs," she continued, "and I want you to go with your friend Buster today . . . back to his house, alright? Give this letter to his parents the _moment_ you see them—before you even say hello, you understand? And, please, don't read it before then . . . for me. Okay, sweetie?"

Babs could scarcely contain herself. "Yeah. Yeah." She said at last—albeit shakily.

"Good." Lola nodded, desperate, at all costs, to avoid the impending awkward silence. "Now hurry up before you get left behind."

And with that, and a gentle push towards the doorway, all ties were suddenly severed between the two of them. Babs proceeded anxiously out of the classroom, glancing, repeatedly, back over her shoulder, as if to make sure that all of this wasn't just some immensely complicated joke that we'd both been playing on her. She paused, then, as she reached the edge of the doorframe, giving her mother what, she presumed, would be one last look and—too revved up and confused to even manage a tear—she choked out, instead, the words, "I love you," and turned at once to leave.

"What did it say—the letter?" I asked Lola a few seconds later.

"The truth." She replied, staring blankly at her feet.

My heart sank. I couldn't kill her, I knew. It wasn't right. She was a single mother—on a teacher's salary. To kill her would be to cross the fine line between vigilante justice and cold-blooded murder. The fact that she had a daughter, whom she truly needed to care for and to be there for, despite my every wish to the contrary, had punched some large and insurmountable holes in my original plan.

I sheathed my sword, then, as she fell into the chair behind her desk, holding her face in her hands, yet without making a sound. "Sit down, Daffy." She said finally, and I obeyed, squeezing into a desk near the front of the class. "I want you to know," she went on, "before all of this is over . . . _why_ I did what I did."

I said nothing, yet listened intently.

"You remember . . . what happened back at the mountain—when I left, don't you? Well, the truth is, it wasn't _all_ because of Bugs. It really had nothing to do with the fact that I'd gotten sick and tired of him. . . . I left, actually, because . . . well, I was pregnant."

I swallowed hard. I had an idea what this was all leading up to.

"At first, I was excited." She went on. "Bugs and I had never really talked about . . . you know, having a baby before . . . but I was _sure_ that he'd be just as happy as I was, so I told him about it . . . right after I found out myself." She broke off, then, working fast to fight back a tear. "I—I was surprised. He seemed . . . so distant at first—like I was bringing him bad news. I thought that, maybe, he was just a little shocked by it all—at how sudden it was. I figured that he'd come around before too long—that he just needed a little more time, so I backed off for a while—just to give him some space, you know?

"But, before long," she continued, "he really started to pursue me and—and started to get on my back about it—like it was all _my_ fault, like it was some big inconvenience that I'd personally concocted just to annoy him. He said he didn't want a child . . . and that he sure as hell wasn't going to help me raise one. So—so I left. I left the mountain and I left him. And, to be perfectly honest with you, I don't think it even affected him much."

It made sense, I thought, but it still didn't explain why she'd volunteered to help Bugs out in his attempt to kill me.

"I—I never once thought that I'd ever see him again," she explained, "but—but a year ago, he—he called me up and told me . . . that he wanted to come back into my life, and that he wanted to help me raise our child—Babs—like he should've done from the start. I don't know why I believed him. I guess that, maybe, somewhere deep down inside, I—I still loved him . . . and I wanted to see him again.

"So," she exhaled slowly and unfortunately, "when he asked to me to help him out a little while later—after we'd both seen each other a few more times—I had a hard time refusing him. But . . . he wouldn't tell me exactly what it was until it was too late."

"And what did he say?" I asked with sunken eyes.

"He said . . . " she was sobbing openly now, "he said that we were going to kill you." She sighed and groaned painfully, as though she were only just now realizing what she'd done. "Believe me, Daffy," she choked, "I never once wanted to hurt you, and if I could have, I would've gone straight to the police. I would've told them everything, but Bugs—he would've killed me if I'd tried. Even now, I know, if he couldn't get to me, then he'd come after my daughter instead. I—I just want to be rid of all this. I want out, Daffy, I want out. But I also want what's best for her—for Babs—because I love her—I love her more than anything you could ever imagine."

For a long time, then, neither of us said a word—watching each other with guarded eyes and shielding one another from our thoughts as we sat there in utter silence. But even so, I could tell, as I looked at her, exactly what she was thinking. She was wondering, I knew, whether or not I would go through with it—if I would, indeed, kill her in spite of her plight. I, conversely, wondered if she could tell how strangely conflicted I was inside.

"Apology accepted." I said at last, feeling all the blood in my head suddenly rush to my feet as her expression changed from sullenness to puzzlement, and finally to relief.

The emotion was short-lived, however, as it was then that the door—once again—burst open, revealing, in its wake—surrounded by dozens of armed guards, no less—the one, the only, Bugs Bunny. In the blink of an eye, then, the soldiers all navigated quickly around him, spreading out—as they were trained to do, no doubt—along the length and width of the classroom, their guns all pointed sharply at Lola and I—perfect headshots—as Bugs stepped casually past the threshold.

His eyes looked different now. They were cold and strange and almost beastlike, with a yellowish hue that deftly accented his pitch-black pupils. His ears hung low and limp over his head, as if he'd long since tired of holding them erect, and his lips were no longer curled into the innocent grin or playful smirk that had once made him so famous. Instead, now, he wore an odd and fully vacant, buck-toothed smile that seemed to proclaim, above all else, the words, "I win." Dressed in a stark, black, hand-fitted tuxedo and shiny, black, leather dress shoes—all presumably very expensive—he slowly neared the two of us, like a predator waiting to strike.

"Think again, Daff." He advised quickly, noticing as my fingers wrapped silently around the handle of my sword. "Not even _you_ can stop 'dis many bullets."

The soldiers, all ensconced in tactical gear, cocked their Bushmaster CAR-15 .223's as loudly as possible—a warning sign for the ages. Realizing, then, that I'd never have a chance in a fight with all of them around, I begrudgingly released my grip on the sword and raised my hands up high for them to see.

"I _thought_ I'd find 'da two o' you here." Bugs said without acknowledging my gesture. "And just in 'da nick o' time, too, right, Lola?"

"Go to hell." She snarled through gritted teeth.

Bugs's smile only grew wider. "Sorry, doll-face," he chided, "but not today."

A solid _puff_ erupted from one the soldiers' guns and a tiny green dart found its way into Lola's neck. She barely had time to reach for it to pull it out before the drugs inside took sudden effect and her head collided heavily with the top of her desk.

Another _puff_ exploded loudly in my ears and I felt the sting of a second dart myself as it burrowed deep into the skin of my neck, just shy of the jugular vein. But it wasn't enough. Staggering, I shakily got to my feet, feeling the impact of a third dart as it struck me in the back, and unsheathed my sword with a fiery rage in my eyes, bearing down, now, upon Bugs, who looked, still, rather smug. A fourth and a fifth punctured me from the side, instantly sopping away much of my strength. I dug the tip of the sword into the floor for support, like a third leg, just to remain standing, and it wasn't until a barrage more of tranquilizers stung me like angry bees that I collapsed, feeling numb all over and on the brink of yet another long sleep.

My eyelids fell like window blinds and shut out the blurry world all around me, just as Bugs's voice whispered, in the driest of tones, "Sweet dreams, Daff."

_End of Chapter Eight._


	9. Duck Season

_Chapter Nine: **Duck Season**_

_Part I_

Twisting and contorting the various portions of my limp, lifeless body as they each saw fit, two thick, hefty sets of gloved, muscular hands pulled me abruptly to my feet and shoved me forcefully across the room like an inanimate rag doll. Much too startled, then, to maintain my balance, I cried out in shock as the floor slipped right out from underneath me, then again in pain as I was grabbed spontaneously from behind and stood up straight like an uncooperative action figure. My arms were hoisted inconsiderately up into the air before being forced violently together at the wrists, and a sharp, metallic "_click_" coupled with the sudden, unwelcome sting of cold, solid steel helped further assure me as to exactly what was going on all around me. Handcuffs, I told myself—like a living dream of Wile E Coyote. But where was I?

Feeling the hands of my captors slowly releasing me, I allowed one curious, bloodshot eye to slip intriguingly open, just long enough to catch a single—albeit, extremely telling—glimpse of my surroundings before slamming rigidly shut once more. My mind worked quickly to decipher exactly what it was that I'd seen. First and foremost, I noticed—almost disbelievingly—that my entire body, from nose to toes, had been stripped unapologetically bare. The dark, ebony-black feathers of my hardened abdomen and the rough, pumpkin-hued skin of my lanky legs and feet now stared grimly back up at me from below, vividly contrasted against the eerie, brownish-grayish glow of the smooth, concrete floor and dim, weird-ish lighting.

My hands had both been bound tightly together at the wrists, suspended someplace high above my head with the chain connecting each cuff fastened securely around a long, rust-ridden pipe that ran stiffly parallel with the invisible rafters of the darkened ceiling. In other words, I was stuck.

Testing out my other eye, then, I was met with an image perhaps even more startling than the first.

Lola. Even in the darkness I could tell that it was her—bound and shackled just as I was—stripped naked and beaten. Conscious or unconscious, I couldn't tell. Her head had fallen liltingly to her chest, and her body now appeared to be covered in long, wide, painful bruises with big black, brown, and blue rings circling sullenly around her vacant eyes and spreading like butter across the wet, balmy surface of her thin arms and legs. My heart felt as though it could've leapt right out of my chest.

Nearly gagging on my own spit, I looked quickly away, just in time to watch helplessly, instead, as an enormous, debatably clean syringe plunged callously into my hotly pulsating jugular vein, slowly depositing the entire sum of its warm, goopy contents into my dangerously unguarded bloodstream. My muscles tensed up like a thousand red rubber bands, suddenly pulled taut, and my stomach felt as though it were about to flip painfully inside-out. Furthermore, the needle didn't come out all at once. Instead, like being stung by a giant killer bee, it extracted itself slowly away from the warm surface of my smooth, spongy skin with all the impatience and eagerness of an infallibly injured three-toed sloth—stagnant and staggering.

I followed up an enormous, heaving cough, then, with a sudden, spasmodic cringe as blood spattered steamily against the bare lining of my sore esophagus. Wincing intensely, I gulped down what little saliva I had left in a vain attempt to try and wash away the bleeding, but to no avail. This was all coming at me so fast, I thought—faster, perhaps, than I could handle. There was barely enough time to register one thought—let alone a complicated one—before a dozen more came piling in on its heels. Not to mention the fact that my entire body ached all over with the powerfully potent after-effects of Bugs's inimical animal tranquilizers. What exactly was he planning to do with me, anyway?

One thing was for certain: it wouldn't be long before I had my answer.

"Excellent job, fellas. 'Dat should be all for now." There it was, I told myself. There it was. The voice that I'd been dreading all this time to hear—the voice that made my feathers slick with sweat, the voice that made my pulse pound puissantly inside my veins, the voice that made my heart tremble with inexplicable rage, the voice that had once uttered the words, "it's your funeral, not mine," before putting a single, solitary bullet inside my skull, the voice, I knew, which belonged so singularly to Bugs Bunny—that bastard, that fucking coward.

I opened my eyes.

"Dismissed." He said, snapping one hand composedly to his forehead in a solemn, militaristic salute. The two mercenaries, dressed all in black, who'd hung me emotionlessly from the ceiling not ninety seconds beforehand, stood tall and straight, then silently returned the gesture without so much as an aphoristic glance in my direction. Bugs, on the other hand, couldn't seem to keep his eyes off of me. A few plodding, languid seconds later and the soldiers' arms fell abruptly to their sides as they shuffled off tersely into the darkness, disappearing speedily through the shadowed doorway at the opposite end of the room and pulling it noiselessly shut behind them.

My heart stopped. Time froze in its place. Here I was, all alone in this sodden, rustic basement, chained to the ceiling across from an unconscious single mother and standing virtually eye-to-eye with my most hated enemy. Hell froze over. The sky fell on our heads. The seconds ticked insipidly by. My mouth went dry. Bugs smiled.

"What's up, doc?" He chided, playfully bearing his teeth. My hands balled uselessly into fists somewhere high above my head and I bit down hard on my tongue. Having removed his suit jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and loosened his tie, he looked, perhaps, a bit more comfortable than before, even with his ears drooping spiritlessly over his forehead and his cuffed, habitually spotless, egg-white gloves now stained with dark, crimson-red blood.

I didn't answer. I could barely stand to look at him, let alone dignify his snide remarks with an honest reply.

"Listen, Daff," he said, "it's gonna be a long night whether ya' wanna speak to me or not, so ya' might as well make yerself comfortable while you've still got 'da chance."

My eyes bubbled with hatred, staring daggers into his soul. He wouldn't get a word out of me, I told myself. Not yet—not while he still had so many of his own to divulge. All those unanswered questions that still lingered impatiently in the back of my head—all those queries and quandaries and blank, wide-open philosophies about people I hardly understood—all of them—each and every one begged for immediate closure. After all, how could he expect me to put out more than I'd ever put in in the first place?

"Don't look at me like 'dat, doc." Bugs muttered inexorably. "Makes me think 'dat youdunno' what's goin' on here. Makes me think 'dat you've convinced yerself 'dat _I'm_ 'da bad guy."

Lola stirred, then, slowly tensing up her muscles and gingerly lifting the lids off her darkened, swollen eyes.

"But 'dat ain't true, now, is it, Daffy?" Bugs went on scoldingly. "'Cause you and I both know 'dere's only one real bad guy here in 'dis room," pause, "and it ain't me, 'dat's for damn sure. I don't think I need to remind ya'. Unlike you, I haven't killed a soul. No, sir. Not me. Never in my life."

I could see where this was going: instilling the blame, fueling my rage, cleansing himself—three birds with one stone. But was he actually suggesting that he'd been completely without responsibility here—that none of this had been his fault and that he'd played entirely no part in it at all? Could he honestly say that he believed that?

"But _you,_" he persisted, grinning, now, from ear-to-ear, "well, let's just say I've never seen ya' so satisfied as when you was choppin' 'da heads off all 'dose poor, innocent bastards. Must be in yer' blood or somethin'. Evil deeds for evil seeds, if ya' know what I mean." He laughed at that, glancing back, for a moment, at his estranged ex-wife. "Well, would ya' look at 'dat?" He mused. "Looks like somebody's finally decided to join 'da party!"

Lola worked fast to try and blink her eyes back into focus as Bugs traipsed speedily across the room—clearly headed in her direction—his left arm invasively outstretched and his fingers aimed—like thin red laser beams—directly at the surface her raw, uncovered throat, preparing, foreseeably, to take a firm hold of her at any moment. She tried to run, yet only succeeded in violently separating her shoulder blades as the handcuffs anchored her torturously in place. Additionally, her sudden, cacophonous cry of agony was cut unexpectedly short as Bugs locked one hand forcibly beneath the base of her skull and squeezed hard like an angry Venus' flytrap.

"Remember all 'dose mean, horrible things ya' used to say to me, dollface?" He hissed at her, barely audible above a whisper. "All 'dose—'dose inconsiderate lil' comments? Remember?"

She choked desperately—gasping for air—still not fully awake. "I—I don't—"

"_Really?_" His eyes went wild, as though he'd just taken an enormous shot of heroin. "Ya' _don't? _Is 'dat so? Ya' don't know _nothin'?_ Ya' don't remember a _fuckin' thing?_" Still gripping her windpipe firmly in one hand and digging harshly into her left shoulder with the other, he turned his head stiffly—like an awkward sock puppet—to face me. "Ya' hear 'dat, Daff? She says she don't remember!" His abrupt change of demeanor caught me almost completely off-guard. "I'll bet you remember though, right, doc? You remember all 'dat shit, don't ya'?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Y'see, Lola, it wasn't _just_ when we were married 'dat ya' did 'dis to me. No, sir." His thin lips nearly grazed the furred saffron surface of her soft, fluffy ears. "You _never_ appreciated me. Did ya', cutie?"

Wide-eyed and full of terror, gasping desperately for air, her face appeared to be that of a confused little child, cowering submissively at the aggressive hands of an abusive parent. In other words, she couldn't have answered if she'd tried. Her heart was in her stomach.

Bugs, on the other hand, remained as eerily stony as ever, slowly loosening his grip on her throat and standing up perfectly straight, gazing down blankly, instead, at his shiny, black dress shoes as though suddenly realizing that he'd done something horribly wrong. Unfortunately for the two of us, in his eyes, he hadn't.

"Y'know, dollface," he muttered a bit disappointedly, "you really should consider yerself lucky," pause, "lucky 'dat 'dere's still somebody else here in 'dis room," pause, "somebody _else_, besides you—somebody 'dat I just can't help but feel a bit more interested in at 'da moment." Pause. "'Cause I can honestly say 'dat if he wasn't here right now," a single thumb, nudged plaintively in my direction, "I wouldn't have a single reservation to . . . _endin'_ it right here."

Swallowing what remained of her exclusively outward-bound timidity, Lola gently upturned her small, pink button nose and looked him squarely in the face—a thin trickle of blood rolling softly down her tender, swollen cheek.

"Go ahead. I've been waiting all day for it."

Bugs shut his eyes with a repugnant grimace, as though he expected lasers to shoot from them at any moment. "Oh, I'm sure ya' have," he spoke up steadily, "but believe me, darling, it ain't gonna be all 'dat easy." His eyes shot suddenly open once more. "At least, not for _you._"

His hauntingly golden stare made its way thoughtfully back over to me, slowly tracing the faded outline of my tragically slumped-over silhouette. My turn, I thought.

The blood froze chillingly in my veins as he spun swiftly around on his heels and stomped straightaway across the room, quickly closing the gap between us and further advancing his mysteriously vague plot by yet another surefooted step.

"Y'see how easily distracted I get when 'dere's so much Goddamn stupidity in 'da same fuckin' room? Now where was I?" Stiffly, then, and with that 'profoundly' rhetorical question still lingering like purple smoke in the humid air, he glanced contemplatively up at the shortened ceiling, as though collecting his thoughts before they all came tumbling out of his mouth at once, completely unchecked and unorganized.

"Ah! 'Dat's right!" He cried out suddenly, holding an outstretched finger excitedly towards the sky. "We was just discussin' 'da true meanin' o' good and evil, wasn't we? How could I forget? Why, 'dat's one o' 'da main reasons I brought ya' down here in 'da first place.

"Y'see, Daffy," he went on, smiling, "life isn't always so cut and dry—black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. No, sir. As a matter o' fact, it's usually quite the opposite. Take _'dis_ situation for example. Now, normally, when yer' readin' a book or yer' watchin' a movie and a scene 'dat reads somethin' like _'dis_ comes along, it's always 'da _bad guy _'dat's got 'da _good guy_ held hostage in the end—tyin' him up, pointin' a gun in his face—basically just givin' him 'da hardest fuckin' time of his life, right? Helps to build tension and whatnot, y'know?" Pause. "But in 'dis case, as ya' can see, 'da whole damn situation's reversed. Funny how fate works out sometimes, isn't it?

"O' course, knowin' you, ya' probably don't believe one word o' 'dat shit, now, do ya'?"

I nodded and he chuckled expectantly. He'd read my mind, or so it seemed.

"Honestly, Daffy," he said at last, "I don't blame ya'. But just to prove to ya' 'dat I'm not really quite as _bad_ as ya' seem to think I am, I'm prepared to offer ya' a nice lil' consolation prize—or a parting gift, dependin' on how ya' look at it—before we go ahead and try to clear the air between us tonight." He rubbed his hands excitedly together. "And I'm not just talkin' about any ol' piece o' shit off 'da street here, either, doc, I'm talkin' about somethin' real specific. I'm talkin' about somethin' really special. Three free questions, to be exact._ Three free questions, _which I will attempt to answer to 'da best o' my ability. No lies, no cheats, no tricks. Anything ya' wanna know. Just ask me, and I'll tell ya'."

His stupidly self-righteous antics didn't fool me. There was only one _real _question, I knew, and there was only one _real_ answer. All the rest was useless drivel—a capriciously complicated ruse, his own sick, twisted version of damage control. But I wasn't about to buy into it. I had some questions of my own—questions which he hadn't intended on answering, questions which pertained much more intensely to the here and the now rather than to the there and the then.

"What did you inject me with?" I snarled, tearing ravenously into his elusive gaze.

"Nothing special." He replied with a frown, completely unfazed. "Just an antidote. But if ya' really wanna know, 'den lemme tell ya'—I'm actually quite proud of it. Y'see—after drama, of course—my second favorite subject has always been chemistry. As a matter o' fact, if I hadn't pumped ya' all full o' 'dat counteragent in time, you'd have probably been dead a couple o' minutes ago." My heart rate buzzed. "'Dat's right, Daffy," he smirked, "'dose weren't no ordinary tranquilizers 'dat ya' took to 'da gut. No, sir. Not even close. More like toxic nerve agents—slow acting, of course, but wit' the amount o' shots 'dat you took . . . a little rough on the ol' nervous system, I presume."

Toxic nerve agents? Is that what he'd said? I could barely bring myself to speak. How close had I actually come to death? How close—without even realizing it? And why had he decided to save me? Why had _he—_of all people—decided to show me mercy? What had he hoped to achieve through such an uncharacteristically selfless act?

"But the antidote," he went on, puffing out his chest, "well, 'dat was 'da real work of art—'da real _genuine article._" His eyes lit up proudly. "Designed it myself. O' course, we only tested it out on lab rats, but, luckily, it seems to work just fine on ducks, too." An unwelcome smirk. "Next question."

At the moment, I couldn't allow myself to become lost in the details. There'd be plenty of time to reflect on things later. But, for now, I had to remain focused on the task at hand without getting sidetracked by all the numerous unimportant trivialities which were sure to pop up along the way.

"Where are we?" I asked. It seemed like an appropriate question, the next logical step in a natural string of progression.

"ACME Headquarters," came the terse response, "in a basement below 'da parking garage where nobody will interrupt us."

A distant rumble of thunder could be heard rolling grievously past outside. Last question, I thought. The only one that really mattered. His smile was telltale enough. Didn't this stupid fucking rabbit ever relax his lips?

I knew exactly what he wanted to hear. It could all be summed up into one simple, concise little word—one plain, everyday, three-letter adverb. _Why? _That was it—that was all—the one question which alone governed this whole disgusting incident, the one question which alone determined the vastly overdue meaning of everything that had happened to us since, and the one question which alone would calculate the staggering sum of our collective sins.

Why? Why had I always been so foolish? Why? Whyhad everything turned out this way? Why? Why were we even here in the first place? Why? And for what purpose? For what reason? With what motivation? None of it, I knew, could ever make any sense at all without that one simple little word—why?

But, then again, how could I ever manage to bring myself to verbalize it? Strictly speaking, it wasn't possible. There was simply no way that I could go about it without also playing directly into his hands. And what good would that do for me? What good would that do for anybody? Empowering the tyrant, making concessions; none of it had ever worked—none of it had ever redeemed anyone throughout all of history. Yes, perhaps it would bring me some small sample of closure, but certainly it would not provide me with any degree of satisfaction. I needed to see his blood for that. I needed to see him cowering in terror at my feet, sobbing openly into his palms while I stood so powerfully over him, gripping my sword like an angry Spartan, about to deliver the killing blow. That was all that could end it for me. That was all that could satisfy _my_ blood lust.

Fuck this shit, I thought. He could dig for gold on his own time.

"What time is it?" I asked, gazing readily up into his dark, searching eyes, waiting patiently for a response.

His face quickly morphed through several painfully familiar emotions. First, from anxiousness, it transformed into confusion, then into disappointment, and then finally into anger. His eyes seemed to grow steadily narrower until they became nothing but mere slits chiseled deeply into his skull below the wrinkled, gaping forehead and cliff-like brows.

His fist smashed heavily into the side of my head and everything went black. My ears started ringing. Thousands of tiny, spastic stars erupted all over the place, clouding my bleary field of vision and bursting suddenly into a million more like my own private fireworks display. I opened my eyes, tried to regain my footing, but a second enormous blow to the base of my forehead sent me spiraling right back into darkness. I choked.

My head was throbbing. Everything was cold. Lola was saying something—something loud and something furious—something threatening and violent. Her voice carried sharply across the room, driving at me like a swarm of bees through an enormous wall of liquid. Blurry and out-of-focus, my eyes realigned themselves inside my head.

"Shut up!" Bugs erupted. "Shut 'da _fuck_ up!"

The whole world went silent, just as his hand went suddenly to the base of my skull.

"Now listen, ya' stubborn lil' shit," he growled through closely gritted teeth, "I didn't bring ya' all 'da way down here just to beat around 'da fuckin' bush, alright? You know _exactly_ what 'dis is all about! Just ask me 'da damn question! Say it!"

I could feel him squeezing the corners of my beak together as though he wished to slowly crush my head in on itself. My eyes were dull, but his were full of fire, bouncing and leaping and jumping all over the place. I bit my tongue. There was no way out of this. I would have to concede.

"W—why?" I choked, hot saliva mixed with blood dripping from the edges of my bill. Giving in had never felt so terrible. It was as though my entire soul had been attached to those three letters. Suddenly I felt so incredibly empty. My ribcage could've collapsed in at any moment and I wouldn't have given it a second thought.

Yet again he'd managed to come out on top. Yet again he'd managed emerge victorious, leaving me there to eat his dust, clueless and confused, defiled and humiliated. How had he always managed to keep me subdued? In all the years I'd known him, he had never once faltered within my presence. It was painful. It was discouraging. Every negative that he'd ever experienced had been nothing compared to the subsequent negative which had, instead, latched onto me, as if to lower me to some new unexplored level of inferiority.

This time, however, there was no comparison at all. I had been destroyed, torn limb from limb, and burned to ashes all by a single word. There was nothing left of me. Even in the face of my mission I could not succeed against him. And the worst thing about it was that he seemed to realize it just as well as I did.

At least he wasn't smiling anymore.

"_Why? Why? _Ya' wanna know _why?_" He was screaming at me, just a few claustrophobic inches from my face. "It's because I _hate you, _Daffy! 'Dat's why!"

His knee collided with my stomach and I nearly choked on my own lungs.

"I've _always_ hated you!" He drove on, finally releasing his incredible stranglehold on my throat. "_Always! _From 'da very second I met ya'! I only wish I'd realized it sooner!"

Yet another row of knuckles smashed into my face and the bitter taste of warm blood began to fill my mouth. Still reeling from the punch, I allowed it to dribble out numbly onto the floor in front of me. My heart was racing, my head was spinning, and Bugs was doing everything in his power to ensure that my entire world came crashing down all around me.

"Oh, sure, Sylvester and Foggy and Elmer Fudd—'dey mighta' disliked ya', but not nearly in 'da same way as I did. Not nearly in 'da same way as I _do._" His hands were shaking. "I hate 'da way ya' think, Daffy. I hate 'da way ya' sound and 'da way ya' smell. I hate 'da way ya' look and 'da way ya' act. I hate yer' voice and I hate yer' attitude. I hate yer' height and I hate yer' weight. I hate yer' mass and I hate yer' volume. I hate every single fuckin' square inch o' ya'. Yer' like a hungry lil' parasite 'dat just won't let go o' me no matter how many fuckin' times I scrape ya' off!"

My aching, disoriented eyes went rolling around inside my head, finally coming to rest upon Lola's shriveled-up, coldly withdrawn silhouette, hanging not ten feet away across the room. Was she . . . crying? It certainly appeared that way.

"You have no _idea,_" Bugs continued, his eyes turning slightly red around the edges, as though he himself were also on the brink of tears, "what life has been like for me ever since we left 'dat mountain. Why, if I ever saw ol' Wile E again, I. . . . " He trailed off, eying me closely. "Now, don't get me wrong here, doc, 'cause I know 'dat I shouldbe thankful for everything 'dat he taught us—for everything 'dat he taught _me—_but 'da way he pitted us against each other like 'dat," I could practically see the adrenaline pounding in his veins, "'da way he presented me wit' 'da very _opportunity, _'da very _possibility_ o' killin' ya'," his lips seemed to freeze mid-sentence as though a cold arctic breeze had blown unexpectedly past, "it tore me up inside."

Somehow, it wasn't as hard for me to understand as he seemed to think it would be—for I, too, had felt that very same instinctual call to aggression that he had spoken of—that one strange, unscrupulous sensation that lies somewhere deep down inside of us all, telling us to raise our fists in fury and shout out our names like a pack of wild barbarians—that one fiery, overpowering voice inside our heads that commands us all to unsheath our swords and unholster our guns like naïve little children, that one shadowy, disgusting, painful urge that every single one of us understands yet that we all refuse to accept.

I almost felt sorry for him. If he had indeed felt the very same way that I had felt during some of the more hair-raising portions of my _own _journey, then I could only begin to fathom the enormous tidal wave of emotion that was almost certainly crashing down on him at the moment. He must've been strong—much stronger than I'd ever been willing to give him credit for in the past.

"From 'dat point on," he began again, "I was a completely different rabbit altogether. I was _obsessed—_obsessed wit' _you,_ obsessed wit' 'da 'toon 'dat I hated most—and it was eating me up inside—eating me up inside just to think about it, just to feel it poundin' in my veins. And it still hurts me, Daffy, even to 'dis day. The only difference _now _is I finally have the opportunity to do somethin' about it." He backed away from me, turning and exiting the leftward boundaries of my narrow cone of peripheral vision.

"O' course," he continued on somberly, "if 'da world was really every bit as fair and balanced as it's supposed to be, 'den we wouldn't even be havin' 'dis conversation right now, would we?" A senseless question, though one that had always managed to spark my interest in one way or another. "As a matter o' fact, under _'dose _circumstances, you'd have been dead a long, long time ago."

Wait. What did he mean by that—"a long, long time ago?" Taking it literally, it would've meant that he'd in fact exercised _more_ than just the one attempt at bumping me off. I couldn't believe it. Had he really been planning and plotting and re-planning and re-plotting this whole elaborate coup for years and years on end? Had he really become that unhealthily absorbed in his own "work?"

"I s'pose it all started 'da night we left for L.A." He explained drearily. "'Dat was 'da first time 'da thought ever actually crossed my mind." Slowly re-entering my field of vision, he laid a finger gently across his forehead and pressed down on his skull as if hoping to smash straight through and show me for himself. "What if Daffy wasn't 'dere anymore? What if he just disappeared? What if—what if _I _could do it? What if _I_ could get rid of him?

"At first, I thought I must've been losin' my mind." He laughed. "Some kinda crazy psychosis shit or manic depression or somethin'. But 'den I got to thinkin' about it, and suddenly it didn't seem like such an outlandish idea after all. Sure, it wasn't 'da most _noble_ of experiments, I'll admit 'dat, but, in 'dis case, none o' 'dat mattered to me. It was exactly what I'd always wanted—you, dead. 'Dat's all 'dat 'dis was ever about. You and me. Nobody else. Not Sylvester, not Fudd, not Foghorn," pause, "not Lola.Y'see, I might've roped a few others into 'da mix, but, truthfully, 'dat was only for 'da sake o' makin' 'da plan 'dat much more full-proof.

"Gettin' started was 'da hardest part. I had no idea where to begin. Fortunately, 'dere was plenty o' time for me to think things through—valuable time, in fact, 'da most important time in 'da world. After all, vulnerabilities can be awful tough to find, am I right, doc?" He paused for a moment as if to savor the voluptuous juices of his own braggadocio-laden tale before continuing on with an incongruously semi-straight face. "I figured 'dat, in 'dis situation, 'da simplest way to catch ya' wit' yer' pants down would be to take ya' out while you was still up on stage in front o' 'da whole studio crew. 'Dat way, it'd be so much easier to make it look like it was an accident. 'Cause if 'da lighting guy says it was an accident, and if 'da camera guy says it was an accident, and if 'da director says it was an accident, 'den 'dat means 'da police report says it was an accident and suddenly _I'm_ in 'da clear. But _how, _exactly, was I supposed about it without arousin' suspicion? Well, 'da prop department seemed like an obvious choice—all 'dose guns and ammo and all 'dat dynamite and explosives—not to mention 'dat 'dey was all owned by 'da same bozo company—"

"ACME." I muttered to myself, barely above a whisper.

"Yeah, 'dat's right." He responded ravenously. "ACME. 'Da biggest champion o' cartoon violence 'dis side o' the Atlantic Ocean. Any plan I might've had to use yer' own props against ya' would have to go through 'dem first, and seeing as how all 'da producers seemed to love watchin' you get shot at, I figured I'd need to get my hands on at least one good rifle to pull it off. But it wasn't 'dat simple. Turns out the ACME Corporation's a lot more protective of its investments 'dan I ever would've thought. Each item to leave 'da storage garages is kept under close watch by certain individuals 'dat I honestly couldn't trust in being sympathetic to my cause. So I knew 'dat if I was gonna make 'da switch—a real rifle for a fake one—I'd have to get it done _before_ 'da props got loaded onto 'da truck. Not only 'dat, but I'd need total access clearance—no questions asked—to the _entire_ building just to get within ten feet o' 'da things. Not the simplest job in 'da world, I know, and especially not when yer' pressed for time like I was."

I could barely believe what I was hearing. It seemed almost incredulous—preposterous, even—that somebody would expend so much time and energy on a plan that seemed so obviously deranged, merely for the sake of erasing an acquaintance whom they didn't particularly care for. I'd been called an egotist, an annoyance, an arrogant, strutting bastard, and a whole slew of other semi-true insults, but never once—or so I'd thought—had I brought about murderous feelings as deep and as passionate as these.

So what had made Bugs such a special case? Surely I hadn't acted any differently around him. The only solution that I could possibly arrive at was that which he had already given me. He'd become obsessed—obsessed, perhaps, not with my ultimate demise, but rather with my murder at his own hands. It excited him and perplexed him in some bizarre, impersonal way which he hadn't quite yet come to terms with.

If only I'd recognized it sooner. Maybe none of this ever would've happened. Maybe no one would've ever had to die. But, then again, having lived through so much already, could I honestly say that I really would've preferred that outcome? Or had this entire scenario actually brought about some long overdue emotional growth inside of me that would've been truly unfortunate to squander? I wasn't sure if I even knew anymore.

"Before I started, I knew I had to test 'da water first, so I set up an appointment wit' the ACME head chair and headed on over 'dere to try and talk to him myself—figured if I could get _him_ involved, I'd be killin' two birds wit' one stone." Pause. "But when I told him my plan—when I told him what I intended to do, he—he started—he started . . . _laughin'_ at me." Silence. "'Dat ever happen to you, Daffy? 'Dat ever happen to ya'—I mean, when yer' _really_ vulnerable? Yer' tryin' to be serious and 'dey're sittin' 'dere laughin' 'deir ass off at ya'? I just wanted to shut him up, 'dat's all."

I wondered if Lola was listening to any of this. Perhaps she'd heard it all before. Her eyes appeared to be almost glazed over inside her head and the fur on her face was slick with tears. Why my thoughts continued to dwell upon her I couldn't fully understand. There was something about her presence within the room that made me feel safe. She kept me rooted in a world of fantasy where I'd never have to truly face any of the dark actualities being placed before me.

"Maybe I went a lil' overboard," Bugs conceded, dragging me restlessly back to reality, " but I eventually got him to go along wit' my plan. As a matter o' fact, I got him to go along wit' a lot more 'dan I ever asked him for in 'da first place. Didn't take too long either. Just showed him a picture of his wife and son . . . wrapped up in duct tape . . . wit' black eyes . . . and before I knew it, _I_ was 'da new head chairman. Talk about coincidences."

I couldn't stand his attitude—the way he pledged such utter indifference to every small act of violence he caused. It was almost sickening to behold. How could one bright, optimistic, seemingly jovial person be so heartless and cold underneath? Never in my life had I seen such a precedent.

"So suddenly everything was proceedin' according to plan. I had all 'da clearance 'dat I needed, I had all 'da help 'dat I needed, and every one o' my newfound employees were absolutely thrilled when 'dey received 'da memo in 'da morning. Bugs Bunny—new head chair—corporate CEO wit' unlimited access, ready and willin' to make 'da _big_ decisions. O' course, just to save face, 'dere was also a pretty strict gag order floatin' around 'da building—more of a safety precaution 'dan anything else. After all, if 'da media were to get a hold of it, 'den it'd be _my _face plastered all over 'da front page and 'dat simply wasn't an option."

My mind wandered all the way back to Los Angeles—all the way back to Sylvester's whorehouse overlooking the sleazy, ecstasy-popping dance floor of the Lucky Pussy nightclub situated on the outskirts of Compton. "I guess he only tells his _closest_ friends that kinda shit." That's what he'd said to me. It was the first I'd heard of Bugs's CEO status at ACME. Naturally, I'd assumed that it'd been money which had motivated him to seek out my destruction. How wrong I'd been.

Maybe Sylvester had known more. Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to judge. Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to question him. Maybe I shouldn't have tortured him. Maybe I shouldn't have threatened him with more pain than I could've possibly delivered.

Maybe I should've forgiven him. Maybe I should've forgiven all of them. Maybe then the cycle of violence would've finally been broken. Maybe then I would've grown stronger because of it. Maybe then I wouldn't have become such a sinner.

"I turned 'da company over to a round table o' subordinates 'dat actually _cared_ about our stock price." Bugs explained. "It was 'da best way to keep things from lookin' suspicious. 'Dey'd been workin' 'dere for years and 'dey all had plenty of experience when it came to runnin' 'da company—_way_ more 'dan I had. 'Dat way, all I had to worry about was shootin' cartoons, signin' documents, and sneakin' my way into 'dat supply room.

"I'll admit," he conceded, "it took me about a year longer 'dan it should've to get my nerves up," he glanced at his feet, as though embarrassed by it, "but you can rest assured, doc, 'dat when 'da time finally came for me to make my move, I was ready."

There was a certain inflection of satisfaction deep within his voice, as though the very thought of it brought back 'pleasant' memories of past brutalities.

"I'd accounted for every possible factor," he whispered, "right down to what I'd say to 'da coroner 'dat evening. But 'dere was still one factor 'dat was completely outta my control—one factor 'dat absolutely _no one_ could predict, and one factor 'dat I _prayed, _day and night, wouldn't _fuck_ me over when it mattered most." He didn't have to say it. "_You._" But he did.

"All 'dose years o' plannin' and all 'dat money down 'da drain just for 'da sake o' pre-meditatin' 'dis whole thing out to a _T _. . . " he stared grimly into my eyes, "none of it meant anything unless _you_ could give me a proper performance. How's 'dat for fuckin' ironic?" He unholstered the chrome-faced gun on his hip and stared down at it, like a child with a brand new toy on Christmas morning. "All I needed was for you to stand on your mark," his accent briefly disappeared, "and you couldn't even give me that. Fuckin' amateur."

Quietly, he removed the safety. "So just imagine 'da way I felt when Speedy Gonzalez came runnin' up to me 'dat afternoon, bouncin' up and down like a fuckin' spring, screamin' about how 'dey were takin' ya' off to 'da hospital—'bout how you'd just been _grazed_ by a bullet on 'da set." He pressed the barrel of the gun against my forehead. "I don't think I even _tried_ to make myself look innocent—not even in front o' him—not even to cover my own tracks." He slid the gun to my cheek and then to my chin, as though attempting to pinpoint the very best spot to pull the trigger. Every skin cell on my face seemed to wince as it came into contact with the cold, sparkling steel, and Bugs's starkly unsettling smile appeared sick and almost euphoric under the sparseness of the light. His lips turned up and his eyebrows drooped, shading from view his vacant, bat-like pupils as his finger trembled anxiously on the trigger.

"And 'dat wasn't even 'da worst of it." I could smell the lead in the chamber—dirty and metallic—like the scent of short change from a newspaper stand. "Not only had ya' unknowingly cut _years_ out o' my life and ruined 'em all in one fell swoop, but ya' seemed determined to make me pay for it." He wrapped his fingers tightly around my throat, like an eagle's talon closing in on its prey. "And what made it so much worse was 'da fact 'dat it was still such a profound lil' secret. 'Dat lawsuit ya' filed was like a dagger in 'da heart o' my career. I couldn't allow 'da trial to go forward. I couldn't allow ya' to get away wit' it."

Then—as though my skin had turned abruptly to brimstone—he pushed forcefully off of me and slowly holstered his weapon, diverting his ravenous gaze once more to his right—my left. This time, however, I took a look for myself.

There was nothing there—nothing noteworthy, at least. A wooden, four-legged table stood unevenly against the wall, stacked carelessly with all sorts of unrecognizable items. As I began to take a closer look, however, it became apparent what was repeatedly drawing Bugs's attention. Several long, jagged, and even occasionally serrated knives lay flat on the surface of the table, piled up alongside a fairly large, professionally sealed medical kit and another strikingly lonesome item of particular interest: my sword. Polished and sheathed as though it'd never been touched, its familiar heavenly glow beckoned me even from across the room. Bugs's eyes shot back and forth.

"Y'know, I _always_ liked 'dat one better." He smirked. "I even searched yer' house for it after we shot ya'. Thought maybe Wile E would've let ya' take it home wit ya'—like he did with mine. Guess you wasn't such a teacher's pet after all." He crossed the room to the rickety, old, wooden table and lifted up the sword with one tremulous hand, quietly admiring, for a moment, its dark, ebony sheen. "My, my, my," he mused, slowly pulling back the sheath, "what a fine piece o' steel."

Revealing a few more inches of the blade, then, he carefully eased his chin over the top of it, as though peering over an invisible windowsill and ceremoniously spat an entire mouthful of saliva out onto its surface with one hideous splat. Grinning evilly, he replaced the sheath and dropped the sword carelessly back onto the tabletop.

"Too bad it smells so much like you." He hissed, screwing up his face at me. "Now where was I?" A pointless diversion, I thought, meant only to further degrade me. He had already taken away so much, how could he possibly hunger for more?

His eyes lit up. "Ah, 'dat's right," he mumbled, "I was just gettin' to 'da best part." Sarcasm was evident. "Y'see, Daffy, after you was discharged from 'da hospital a couple o' days later and all o' yer' lawyers had happily convinced ya' to press charges, I _knew_ 'dat I was finished. I _knew_ 'dat if I didn't take care o' ya' once and for all, 'dat not only would a million angry investors be breathin' down my neck, but 'dat 'da cops would _also_ start pokin' around—stickin' 'deir noses where 'dey ought not have been and uncoverin' all sorts o' buried secrets. What a headline—'Bugs Bunny arrested for fraud and conspiracy to attempt murder.' Only in America."

Lola was shaking now—shaking with rage and fear and humility—biting her tongue to keep from crying out. Her eyes met mine and my eyes met hers. We both shared the same thoughts. Words were wholly unnecessary.

"Ya' really can't blame me for what I did." Bugs went on, completely oblivious. "It was the only option I had left. You woulda' done 'da same had _you_ have been in 'dat position." An hour ago, he probably would've been right, but now I wasn't so sure anymore. "None o' 'dose other losers ya' took yer' knife to had anything to do wit' it. Sylvester, Fudd, Foghorn . . . easy enough to pay off—all of 'em except for Lola, of course, but I'm sure she's already told ya' _'dat_ story." He threw a cock-eyed glance in her direction before turning quickly back to me. "'Dey was only 'dere for assurance," he said, "to make sure 'dat everything went exactly as planned. Unfortunately for me, God seems to have a mighty fine sense o' humor."

His hand went once more to his waist, his fingers wrapping comfortably around the handle of his spotless, silver-plated semi-automatic.

"But ya' know what 'dey say, don't ya', Daffy?" He brought the gun up slowly to eye level and took careful aim at my forehead. "Third time's 'da charm." His right thumb pulled back solemnly on the hammer. "'Dis time, I _can't_ miss. 'Dis time, 'dere's no _possibility_ o' failure. 'Dis time, I'm gonna make _sure_ it's all over before I leave 'da room."

His upper lip quivered in anticipation. I shut my eyes.

"No lucky escapes, no secret trapdoors," his voice shivered like that of a somniferous polar bear, "not even a miracle can save ya' 'dis time, Daffy."

All his words had lulled me so far into a daze that it hardly seemed regrettable anymore. Part of me almost wanted him to pull the trigger. Part of me almost wanted him to end it. Part of me almost wanted to die. It seemed like a luxury that so few people ever appreciated anymore—just to sleep for all of infinity, just to quietly slip into nothingness in the physical world while your soul calmly vacates the frame of your lifeless bones and makes that one final relaxing journey into the afterlife.

I'd already realized the supreme error of my ways. Just being here—just seeing Bugs for the way he was, the way he'd become so utterly absorbed and consumed with aggression and hate and spite and a thousand other reckless emotions—was enough to lift my eyes to the world around me. This was no fairytale. Real people—real living, breathing, bleeding beings—had been killed. Dozens were dead because of me—because of my blind, merciless, and ultimately shallow view of life around me. I'd thought that Bugs's attack had left me humbled and lonesome, completely devoid of ego and arrogance when, in fact, it had really only reinforced it. I was just as self-involved as I'd ever been, only now in a different way. I had thought of myself as a vigilante, as a self-preservationist, and even, perhaps, as a judge, sparing few and slaughtering many. And for what? Was I any safer now than I had been before? Was I any more satisfied? Had my life magically come back into order? No. Nothing had changed. In fact, it'd gotten worse, for here I was, on the brink of death, awaiting yet another bullet from Bugs's gun.

It occurred to me, now, that the only true way—God's way—could be fully achieved through love and forgiveness. Only then would the infinite cycle of hatred and violence come finally to an end. Only then would there be safety and satisfaction and order in my life. Only then would I be happy.

Perhaps the time had finally come for me to forgive Bugs for all that he'd done. Perhaps this bullet was meant for me. Perhaps it was all that I'd ever wanted from the very beginning.

"Nobody deserves 'dis more 'dan you." He said accusingly. "Nobody." I knew that it was true. I knew now that it had always been true.

He straightened his arm, locking his elbow solidly into place at the joint and slowly shutting one eyelid. His fingers repositioned on the handle. His feet stood flatly on the floor below him. His one visible pupil aligned crisply with the sight. His whiskers twitched.

"G'bye, Daffy." He whispered.

"Goodbye, Bugs." I never replied. Instead, there was only silence—cold, emotionless silence.

Where had I felt this before? Had it been when I'd laid out flat on the pavement in front of Foghorn Leghorn's rustic, ramshackle convenience store? Had it been when Sylvester had hobbled laboriously across the room, gun in hand, adrenaline pounding in his veins? Had it been when Elmer Fudd's three brainless subordinates had opened fire on me at point blank range? Or had I only really felt it when Bugs had first taken aim at me—all those hours and days and weeks and months ago—smack-dab in the center of my own silently smoldering living room?

Something inside me knew, despite all evidence to the contrary, that only _Bugs's _final offense had affected me in such an enormous fashion. All the others had merely been fodder—chicken feed for the chickens—minor obstacles in the way of a much greater, more universal goal. And now everything that I'd worked so diligently to achieve was in jeopardy.

They say when someone points a gun at you, your entire life flashes before your eyes—a garbled summary of your finest, shining moments. The funny thing is, all I ever saw was a—

"Wait!" One word. One syllable. Loud and clear. Not from my mouth. Not from Bugs's either.

* * *

_Part II_

Time—which, up until this moment, had seemed like such a rare, precious commodity—now slowed to an unreasonable crawl, and then finally to a halt. Bugs's eyes grew narrow, his attention diverted. Then, as though he'd lost all control of his limbs, the gun in his hand began to drift slowly to one side as his mouth fell gapingly open.

"_What?_" He growled beneath his breath, gazing angrily at the floor.

"Wait." Lola said again, softer this time. "Just . . . wait."

You could've heard a pin drop. Bugs's face contorted into a twisted mess of hatred and disgust—just as easily readable as a third grade English book. He considered, for a moment, simply disregarding her words—completely mystified, perhaps, by the persistent fact that my respective death had been delayed yet again—but couldn't seem to get past them. After all, why had _she_ decided to intervene? What did _she_ have to gain from it?

"Wait . . . for what?" He hissed, making a slow one-eighty right where he stood.

Lola heaved an enormous sigh of relief. He was listening to her. It was as though she'd been fishing for his attention all night and he'd only now latched onto the bait. If only she could reel him in.

"Bugs." His name burned hotly inside her mouth. "Bugs, you don't have to do this. This isn't like you. This isn't the kind of thing that you were meant to do." She was scrambling, searching for the right words—or, perhaps, the wrong words. "Just let us go, please. It's the only right thing to do. Your heart isn't in this, I can tell."

His head lowered, he silently stared through his eyebrows at her, inching steadily forward.

"If—if you kill us," she stammered, "the—the cops will just trace all the evidence right back to this place. You—you don't have any other options here, Bugs. You—you _have_ to let us go." Her voice was trembling. She wasn't nearly confident enough to persuade him.

"Really?" He murmured softly—nearly upon her now—gun at his waist. "Is 'dat so? I _have_ to let ya' go? And _why,_ might I ask, is 'dat? What makes ya' think 'dat I'm so scared o' 'da slammer, honey?"

"Bugs . . . " she couldn't seem to make an impression anywhere, "I—I _know_ that you still have feelings for me. I—I can see it. I can see it in you—every time you look at me. It's—it's there and—"

"Shut up!" He cried. "Don't gimme 'dat bullshit! I'm not an idiot, Lola! I know when yer' fuckin' lyin' to me and yer' lyin' to me right 'da fuck now!" This time, he shoved the pistol into her face instead. "'Dis isn't about _me._ 'Dis isn't even about _you._" He paused for a moment, then, as if to clear the air, before glancing suspiciously back over his shoulder. "'Dis is about _him, _isn't it? Why else would ya' have stopped me?"

Lola and I locked eyes once more. Hers were wet and conflicted—torn somewhere between heaven and hell, between selflessness and selfishness, between compassion and abandonment. Mine, on the other hand, were clear and steady without a single fraction of a doubt or even the slightest of reservations—completely humbled and accepting of the world around me. They were stony and walled-up like a well-built dam, concealing an irrepressible tidal wave of unspoken thoughts. I didn't attempt to influence her and I didn't attempt to bargain with her. I didn't even attempt to communicate with her. Whatever words were on her mind, she'd have to speak them for herself.

Rancorously—as though it took much effort—her face became as cold and icy as an angelic plain of snow in the Antarctic desert. "You're right." She answered. "It _is_ about him. But then again, it's _always_ been about him, hasn't it, Bugs?" She never once gave him the chance to clarify. "Y'know—hearing you tonight—I wonder how I _ever_ had the audacity to marry you. You're sick. You're an arrogant, spiteful son of a bitch. So don't you _dare_ judge me when I tell you what this is all about. Lord knows you're just as fucking guilty as everybody else in this room!"

My heart began to swell—as if with pride—inside my chest. She was doing it. She had him in her sights, and even though she'd surely have no chance in stopping him, there was still a certain rare satisfaction to be gained from simply putting him in his place and forcing him to digest the disgusting excesses of his own unadulterated ignorance.

But as I soon discovered, it had never been her intention to straighten him out. It had never been her intention to harm him at all. As a matter of fact, she'd somehow managed—without the slightest of inklings to the contrary—to accomplish something of the exact opposite.

"I love him, Bugs." She said finally, her voice as flat as a stone. "I really do."

I almost choked.

"I love him, Bugs." She said finally, her voice as flat as a stone. "I really do."

I almost choked.

"I love him, Bugs." She said finally, her voice as flat as a—

Shit. I hate it when that happens.

"I love him, Bugs." Her words reverberated like bouncing tennis balls off the brazen walls of my skull, burning into me like some bizarre, murderous poison. I attempted, with little success, to comprehend them.

She—she loved—she loved me? What? How? How was that possible? What had I done for her? Where was all of this coming from?

"I love everything about him. Everything. Everything you said you hated, Bugs, I _love—_deeper than I _ever_ loved you."

What was she saying? What was she trying to pull? Was she actually serious? Could it—without any lead-up or any fleeting instance of revelation—have somehow been true? Or was it all just an elaborate little ruse—a last-ditch effort to save our lives, doomed as they were, without a speck of life to lose in the process?

She shut her eyes. "I only wish that I'd been able to recognize it sooner," a common wont in the room tonight, "before you decided to start playing games with peoples' emotions . . . like it doesn't actually hurt."

She was serious. I knew it. I'd seen it. It was the stillness in her eyes—that certain indefinable calm that never seemed to waver, as though her heart rate were just as eerily steady as the empty waves of the Dead Sea. I wondered if Bugs had seen it. I wondered what decidedly grizzly thoughts were dripping through his head right now. I feared him.

"I don't expect you to understand." She droned on, as though reading from the sports page. "But then again, you're not supposed to, are you? After all, that's how you survive, isn't it?"

You're only making him angrier, Lola. Stop. Stop now before you hurt yourself. This isn't going to help either of us. Stop.

"I guess I can't blame you for ditching me the way you did." She said. "Self-reliance is in your blood. You're not _supposed_ to be attached to anyone. Why else would you have so many enemies? Why else would you have so many admirers? It's because they all want to be like _you, _Bugs. They all want to be like you. That's the only explanation, and that's the only reason why you hate Daffy so much."

I couldn't bear to hear her talk about me. It made me feel so small and organic, so weak and cheap and so easily categorized—not nearly as deep and complex as I would've liked to think of myself.

"But you," she went on, disregarding my repeated prayers to silence her, "you wish that maybe you could've been a little more like him. You wish that maybe you could've turned out just as plain and normal as he is. You wish that maybe you could've been born with an actual _soul_ like he was. You wish that maybe, just once, you could wake up one morning and actually _feel_ something. "

No! Stop! Don't say it! Don't fucking say it! You're killing us! You can't be _fucking_ serious! You _can't!_ Not now! Not _now!_

"That's why you feel so threatened by him, isn't it, Bugs? That's why you had to bring us down here tonight. That's why you had to tie us up like this. You had to prove to yourself that you weren't afraid of him anymore, and you needed _me _to be your witness. Didn't you? Isn't that what you wanted?"

I was scared. Terrified, actually. More so than I'd ever been before—like a naïve little child realizing, for the first time, that they weren't going to live forever. What was it about the truth that inspired so much fear within us? Why—and for what purpose—were we so infinitely destined to reject it? Had anyone _ever_ been able to accurately pinpoint an answer to that question?

Bugs's whiskers twitched ferociously, like the few short flashes of lightning preceding an enormous roll of thunder.

Lola was as good as dead, I knew it. She'd incurred his wrath and stripped away all possibility of escape. Before, there'd always been some small, unexplainable chance of a miracle, but now, out of the clear, blue sky, all of that was gone—washed away, down the drain with all the rest of her ridiculous confessions. I hated it. I hated her. At least, I tried to. I wanted to. I couldn't.

Bugs laughed. "Lola," he said, "I don't think I need to tell ya' how incredibly dopey 'dat is."

Yes. Part of me was rooting for him now. Part of me wanted to see her repaid for all the horrible, unwanted things that she'd said—all the half-baked, compulsive thoughts that she'd somehow managed to inject into my head. Part of me knew that they were true, and part of me knew that, perhaps, I felt the very same way, yet none of me would ever dare to accept it.

"Do I really need to remind ya'," Bugs pressed on with wide, sparkling eyes, full of disbelief, "'dat 'dis duck yer' talkin' about is 'da very same duck 'dat woulda' killed ya' if I hadn't intervened?"

"No, I don't believe that." She responded shortly. "See, what you don't seem to understand, Bugs, is that by the time you'd interrupted us, I'd already apologized," a deadening pause, "and he'd already accepted it."

I felt like an embarrassed little teenager being forced to view his own baby pictures in front of a thousand onlookers. Suddenly, my weakness was just as apparent and clear as day. It was true, I'd let her live, but was that really such an awful, misguided decision? Was it somehow more than just a simple display of compassion? Or did it mean something else—something else entirely? Maybe I hadn't actually saved her for the same reason that I'd allowed myself. Maybe I—maybe I loved her just as much as she loved me. Maybe.

Bugs turned slowly away from her. He looked at me, instead, with the searching eyes of an angry father. It was as though I'd disgraced him in some profound, inexplicable fashion for which I could never be forgiven. Suddenly I wasn't such the imbecilic symbol that he'd once thought me to be. Suddenly I was so much more than he'd ever been willing to admit. Suddenly I appeared to him as far less of an enemy and far more of an operatic, free-thinking figure in comparison with his own stagnant, stationary, unforgiving image. Suddenly his hate began to turn to envy. Suddenly his mind began to churn out thoughts of torture so vile that he could barely maintain his footing. Suddenly we'd reached the end.

"So lemme get 'dis straight," he sputtered, his eyes darting all around the room, "you think 'dat just because he decided to spare yer' life at 'da last minute 'dat somehow 'dat makes him . . . normal? Ya' think 'dat somehow 'dat makes him . . . just like _us?_ Lola, he doesn't _think_ like normal people do. He doesn't _act_ like normal people should. Even now. He doesn't see 'da two of us standin' here talkin'. All he sees is two big, juicy slabs o' meat just waitin' to be killed. 'Dat's all he sees.

"Now you may _think,_" he continued on spitefully, "'dat yer' in love wit' him for whatever reason, but 'dat sure as _shit_ doesn't mean it makes any difference at all to him. It doesn't. It isn't possible. He isn't capable of loving—let alone lovin' ya' back. He can't."

"Actually, Bugs, I," her voice broke off as she gazed deeply into my eyes, "I—I think he can. I think he does."

Please. Please don't say that.

"No! Shut up! He doesn't!" Bugs was suddenly on the defensive, struggling just to maintain his own meager hold on reality. To him, I was nothing more than a statue, completely incapable of living and breathing except while in his presence. I was only there for him when he needed me to be—his second, repulsive half, all that he hated so dearly.

"As a matter o' fact," he lowered his voice, "I _guarantee_ he doesn't love you. I _guarantee_ it." Pause. "And I can prove it, too." Without wasting another second, he migrated hastily across the room towards the table which had so repeatedly snagged his interest earlier on.

"Bugs." Lola called out sternly, like a mother summoning her disobedient child to dinner. "Bugs. Bugs, wait."

Too little, too late, I thought, for he was already far too absorbed, now, within his own task to bother paying her any attention. He rummaged clumsily through the enormous stack of bladed weapons that lay before him, searching constantly for the perfect specimen as though it took a great deal of effort and concentration. Then, after a few waning seconds of sifting silently through each stubborn square-inch of the pile, he emerged suddenly from its depths, clutching what appeared to be nothing but a simple surgical scalpel between his fingers.

"Let's play a lil' game together, shall we?" He announced rhetorically, edging his way closer to the center of the room. "We'll call it: 'He Loves Her, He Loves Her Not,'" an insidious grin, "'da perfect party game. Up to three players—kids to adults—fun for 'da whole family."

"Bugs, stop." She said commandingly. My heart fluttered. She even sounded like a teacher now.

"Stop what, dollface?" He interjected. "Ya' haven't even heard 'da rules yet." Brandishing the scalpel like a thin, razor-edged extension of his own hand, he began to slowly inch closer to her, grinning widely from ear-to-ear. "Don't worry," he assured her, "'dey shouldn't be _too_ difficult to grasp."

"Bugs?" She repeated shakily, her voice trembling.

"All I need is for 'da two o' you to stand completely still," he went on, "while _I_ tally up 'da score. It's simple." He pressed his face gently against hers, carefully holding the scalpel up to her nose. "I'm gonna use 'dis knife," he explained, "to _cut,_" cut, "_cut_ one o' yer' eyes out."

My heart dropped like a stone. Thunderous drums echoed in my ears. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to be back in that hospital bed in the middle of Los Angeles—comatose or not. Anything was better than this. I could almost _feel_ my sanity slipping away. Too much stress, I told myself. Too much pain. Too much everything.

"And the only way 'dat you can get me to stop," Bugs continued on gleefully, glancing suddenly in my direction, "is if Daffy tells me to."

It was almost worse than physical torture, I thought. It was psychological, forcing me to bear witness to the deliberate mutilation of another creature—a friend, at that. Or was she? I still hadn't been able to figure that out yet. Christ, there wasn't enough time to analyze _anything_ anymore. Nevertheless, I knew that I _had_ to stop it. I _had_ to.

"But 'dere's a catch." He said, as though reading my mind. "Always a catch. 'Cause if ya' stop me now, Daffy, 'dat means 'dat I get to do 'da very same thing . . . to _you._"

I swallowed hard. The very—the very same thing? Losing an eye, did he mean? I cringed at the very thought of it.

Did I—did I really—did I really want to see her live? Was her life—was her well-being—was it more—was it more important than my own? There wasn't any time to think it over. It was all about instinct from here on out. What would be my first inclination? To save her life or to save my own? I didn't want to see her hurt, I knew that, but then again, was it worth it to risk my _own_ life—to suffer such an incomprehensible loss—simply to spare her from it? What would _she _have wanted me to do?

"'Dis way," Bugs explained, "'dere shouldn't be any questions left unanswered. 'Dis way, we should know for sure."

He was right, I thought. Son of a bitch, he was right. Either I'd shelter her from the pain or I wouldn't. There were no 'ifs,' 'ands,' or 'buts' about it. Barring some bizarre, unforeseen, and wholly unrealistic turn of events, we were stuck—completely stuck—locked in and strapped up, ready for take-off.

Lola whispered something inaudibly into his ears and he drew back suddenly with a chuckle. "Oh, I know ya' didn't mean 'dat, cutie-pie." He said provokingly. "Just blowin' off some steam, I bet. As a matter o' fact, I'd love to have a whole conversation wit ya' about it some time, unfortunately we're a lil' pressed for time as it is. So just one last question before we get started here," he twirled the scalpel nimbly between his fingers, "right or left?"

She didn't answer him. The look on her face was telling enough—an exuberant blend of fear and tension and loathing so deep that it penetrated the very innards of her soul. She still wasn't confident that I would have the guts to save her. She still wasn't confident that I could feel as deeply about her as the she felt about me. Neither was I. Nothing was clear for me anymore.

"Let's make it 'da left." Bugs muttered excitedly, aiming the tip of the scalpel like a throwing dart at the edge of her eye socket. The blade shone brightly even in the darkness. Every centimeter that it moved seemed to drag on forever and ever. I held my breath, biting back my tongue. My mind was still racing. I couldn't say anything. I couldn't. Not now. Not yet. It wasn't right. It wasn't smart. It wasn't . . . safe.

I shut my eyes. I couldn't bear to watch. Every millisecond that I hesitated was another millisecond that she didn't have, and that blade wasn't waiting around for anybody.

I thought I heard her scream. I thought I heard her crying—crying out for help—and suddenly I was in-tune to it all. There had never been any silence to begin with. She was screaming and shouting and yelling and moaning and screeching herself hoarse, squirming around, trying to keep away from him. But his hand was on her throat, holding her firmly in place and, try as she might, she couldn't seem to break his grasp. He told her to sit still. He told her that it was all her fault. He told her that she shouldn't have trusted that crazy fucking duck in the first place.

What did he want? What did _she_ want? What did _I_ want? What did _God_ want?

Did I love her? Did I like her? Did I know her? Did I want to? Did I even have a clue?

And when had this all occurred? Was it when I'd spared her life? Was it when she'd rested her head against my shoulder? Was it when I'd awoken that first morning at Muztag Mountain?

Was it all in her head? Was it all in _my_ head? Was I losing my mind? Was I falling apart?

My heart sped up. My stomach flipped inside-out. My brow grew slick with sweat. My hands balled into fists. My toes curled up into talons. All the blood in my body rushed suddenly to my brain. My eyes shot open—red and white and black and red again.

No! Stop! Don't! Don't say anything! Stop! Stop! Stop!

"Stop!" I shouted at the top of my lungs. "Stop!"

And just like that—in the blink of an eye—it was all over. Time stood still.

Bugs's scalpel had come within an inch of its target, but it hadn't touched anything. Yet. All was right again . . . for the moment, at least. I dropped my head discouragingly to my chest. Bugs lowered his arms to his sides. Lola's body went as stiff as a board. She'd been right all along.

Was this the way it was all supposed to happen? Was this the pain that I'd always been meant to endure? Was this the way it was all supposed to end?

My arms and legs went numb. My entire body felt cold. I could barely stand. Only the handcuffs were keeping me afloat. All I wanted was to sleep. All I wanted was to disintegrate into nothing and to leave behind all this ruin and wrongdoing forever. All I wanted . . . was to die.

But even at that I was a failure.

Bugs turned slowly around, crestfallen and sinister. "Yer' a real piece o' work, y'know 'dat, doc?" He growled angrily, gazing sharply down his nose at me. "Ya' even had 'da guts to prove me wrong. Guess I shouldn't have been so quick to judge." He took his first foreboding step towards me. "Don't let 'dis one get away from ya', Lola. He's a real keeper." He took a second. "Not 'da brightest bulb in 'da bunch," a third, "but he sure as hell knows how to woo 'da ladies, don't ya' agree?" A fourth.

Lola let out a long, agonizing sigh. She was crying. Again. Tears of joy or terror or sorrow or all three mixed together, I couldn't tell. It didn't matter to me. Not anymore.

"Let's make it . . . 'da right one 'dis time." Bugs declared conclusively, closing in on me like a ravenous vulture in search of its midday meal.

I didn't struggle. I didn't fight. I didn't even scream as he carefully raised the blade up to eye-level. Shackled, restrained, and beaten to within an inch of my life, all that could possibly be expected of me was to watch. So that's exactly what I did. I watched.

So many times along the course of my journey had I been blessed with the never-ending mysticism of the lucky escape that I half expected to be magically freed from my shackles right then and there at that exact moment. Unfortunately, that well had all but run dry for me. There would be no more miracles at this point—not in this lifetime, at least.

Unsurprisingly, Lola had made it her business, once again, to intervene. She cried out bravely in protest—something of the usual sort—something witty and well-calculated and crafty, something convincing. Her indistinct, unmitigated cries fell uncomfortably silent, however, as Bugs first laid his one free hand roughly against the surface of my face, viciously peeling back the skin to the right of my eye and preparing himself for the brutal act to come. He hesitated, allowing the tip of the blade to hover dangerously close over the surface of the newly-formed crevice, as though saying a prayer on the eve of the apocalypse.

The knife went in, wedging itself firmly between bone and jelly as it slowly pried the eye away from its natural position, instantly sending a shock wave of deafening pain rocketing point blank through my skull and down my spine. I choked. My eyelids flickered wildly. I nearly lost consciousness. If only I had.

Everything to the right of me went suddenly red just as everything to the left of me exploded in stars. My knees buckled, but the handcuffs above my head refused to give in. I bit down on my tongue as several of the veins lining the outside wall of the eye were severed, sending a small trickle of blood rolling steadily down the side of my face. Stony and determined, Bugs utilized his wrists above all else in slowly working the tip of the blade around the surface of the eye, gradually off-setting its position before delving in deeper.

Neglecting the pain, the feeling was unlike any I'd ever experienced before. My skull felt as though it were completely full of air—as though the scalpel were invasively puncturing the surface of a balloon, allowing all the helium to come seeping steadily out.

My brain throbbed violently inside my head, painting weird images in the darkness to compensate for the sudden loss of vision. I saw my childhood—half-baked and prepackaged—squeezed impatiently into the hole that now enveloped everything to the right side of my body.

There was Bugs—young and sinless—playing keep-away with a faded old basketball, suspending it unreasonably high above my head and exercising what I perceived to be an unfair height advantage. Try as I might, I could barely reach the ball—even standing on my tiptoes with my arms outstretched. His shiny white shoes scratched loudly against the surface of the tarmac as he faked unexpectedly to the right before dashing suddenly to the left and driving easily past me down the court for the lay-up.

And there he was again, chucking misshapen snowballs at me from across the street. I dodged quickly under the first one but took the second right to the chest. Laughing playfully, I ducked behind a small snowbank and gathered up some ammunition of my own. Reappearing, I was hit once more, knocking the stocking cap clean off my head as I retaliated, tossing a flimsy one directly at Bugs's feet. He cackled uproariously at what he perceived to be a poor throw, but the next one took him by surprise, striking him squarely in the nose.

Unfortunately, I'd apparently released more ice than I had snow and suddenly there was blood running all down the front of his parka. He clutched his nose in surprise and dropped to his knees and my young little heart began to hammer nervously inside my chest. I darted recklessly out across the street, unaware of the big black car speeding directly through my narrowed line of sight. Its brakes squealed and its horn sounded as I dashed out in front of it, grinding to a halt just a few short inches from my knees. I held my mittened hands up in a frantic apology, watching the relieved driver's face pass speedily by before proceeding the rest of the way across the avenue, intent only on helping my injured friend to his feet.

And there he was _again,_ for a third time—older now, at high school age—using the reflection in the window to copy down my answers for our ninth grade biology exam. I remembered it. I'd sat in front of him on purpose. We'd figured it out before class that morning. The dumb fuck hadn't paid any attention all semester and now he needed _me_ to help him pass. It would've worked, too, had he taken into account the effect of the mirror. Consequently, every one of his answers had been wrong save the ones marked letter 'C.' At least the teacher never suspected us.

And just like that, all the images were gone in one colossal explosion of agony. The knife dug deeper into my eye socket, ripping the lids in two and puncturing the surface of the soft white gelatin like a hard-boiled egg. More blood bubbled to the surface, spattering warmly against Bugs's sterile, cream-colored gloves as he began to work his wrist in a shoveling motion, prying the eye away from the cord that bound it safely to my brain.

Blackness enveloped me and all that I could hear soon became the grinding shriek of the scalpel against bone and against flesh, the sickening squelch of blood vessels snapping and dripping with gore, and the thump of my staggering heart pounding relentlessly inside my ears. My tear ducts split and suddenly I began to sob uncontrollably as an unimpeded stream of tears poured swiftly and silently down my face, mixing with the blood that continued to flow and sticking uncomfortably to my feathers, coagulating and dripping and pulling itself down like a long, disgusting bead of saliva on its way to the floor.

My breath came short, wheezing under the weight of the pain. My left eye locked intensely onto Bugs's darkened face and refused to look away. He wasn't smiling. He wasn't laughing. He wasn't even grinning. As a matter of fact, he looked almost saddened by it, like a virtuous bank robber forced to kill a hostage.

He must've known I'd been watching him, for just as quickly as I'd spotted it, all emotion had abruptly drained away from his face.

He cut the thick, wire-like connectors between the eye and my brain, and suddenly what had once been something of a churning, colorful sea of textures and dizzying, unfocused lights had vanished, replaced, instead, by absolute darkness. It was as though my mind no longer had any concept of a right eye, or of anything to the right of me at all for that matter. In fact, for a few brief moments, it was as though my body had been forced to completely reboot and rediscover itself. Half of me went numb while the other half remained in tact. Forcing my left eye laboriously open, however, I was able to convince my brain otherwise.

Bugs calmly rolled the bloody, misshapen remnants of what was once a living, breathing organ of my middle skull into the open palm of his hand and released me, allowing my head to droop sorrowfully down onto my chest, still leaking gobs of blood. For a moment, then, he brought the eye up closer to his face and examined it, as though deeply fascinated by his own dirty work. He nudged it and turned it over, gazing oddly into the now lifeless pupil and the drab, empty retina, and finally closing his palm around it like the hungry jaws of some prehistoric dinosaur.

Lola was finally quiet. She could barely believe it. The look on her face was telling enough. This wasn't at all what she'd intended to happen. She'd only wished to distract him—to, perhaps, prolong our wait up until the torture and to force an escape—but she'd failed miserably at that, and now, here we were, in the same boat as ever, awaiting death once more. Maybe she didn't love me after all, I thought. Maybe I didn't love her. Maybe it was all just an elaborate fucking sham.

Again, her husband crossed quickly to the other side of the room and deposited the eye carelessly within the confines of an over-large plastic bag, sealing it without so much as a second glance. Then, grabbing me by the edges of my tremulous bill, he violently wrenched my head up off my chest and held the bag up sadistically for me to see.

My left eye fell half-lidded. I was exhausted. So much blood—so much of it—gone. My heart was starving. I needed more, but, instead, I just kept losing it—dribbling down the side of my face, pouring out from the big empty hole in my skull, coagulating in dark, crimson red rings between my feathers. Every breath I took was even shallower and shorter than the one before it. My mind began to race. All the good morals and all the poetic changes that I'd briefly experienced over the course of the night—everything clean and righteous and wholesome that I'd subsequently committed to—suddenly vanished, replaced, instead, by an overwhelming blanket of grief, which I reluctantly navigated—one-eyed and weak as a dying cow—step by step.

Fuck it, I thought. Fuck all of it. No big deal. It wasn't so bad. Not really. Could've been worse—an arm or a leg or a finger or something. But an eye? No sweat. I could deal with that. All I really needed was one, right? One. Right? It was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a fucking thing. It couldn't be. And if it was, then—then I just wouldn't think about it. Not right now. Maybe later, but not right now. Why should I? After all, it's just an eye. Just an eye. Just. An. Eye. Just the eye my mother gave me. Nothing else. Nothing . . . else . . .

Bugs dropped the bag at my feet. My cheek bones tightened. I mentally berated him. Cocksucker. Stupid fucking low-life prick. What was that dumbass grin still doing on his furry fucking little face anyway? What? Did he actually think that he'd pulled something over on me? Did he actually think that he'd somehow broken my conviction? I laughed. Is that what he thought? Is that what he really fucking thought? I laughed again. Stupid bastard. Stupid one-dimensional, Brooklyn-born bastard. This was _my_ life we were talking about here. I'd already survived so much, what made him think that I couldn't survive again? What made him think that he even had the balls to kill me in the first place? What was it? Was it the way I looked? Was it the way I talked? Was it the way I acted? Was I somehow _less _of a man than he was? Fuck no. Fuck that. All I needed was one last chance to set him straight—one last chance, and _then_ he'd see . . .

I gulped as my brain began to silently shift gears. Yeah, that was it, I thought. That would do just fine. Another chance—another shot at the golden medal—just one more measly quarter in the pinball machine, that was all. I'd make him pay for that eye—pound for pound I'd make him pay. If only I wasn't in these shackles, I'd eat him for breakfast, I'd tear him limb from limb, I'd be at his throat in an instant. If only—if only I wasn't in these shackles. God came to mind and I quickly swallowed my pride. He would help me, I thought. He would have to help me. If I was calm and clean and completely devoid of arrogance, He would have no reason _not_ to help me, right? So I began to pray—silently, inside my head—hoping that He'd somehow—just at the last second—pull a miracle out of His hat and set me free. That was all I needed.

But nothing ever happened. No matter how heavily I concentrated, no matter how deeply I prayed, no matter how strongly I bargained, nothing ever happened. And with each new blank, uneventful second I could slowly begin to feel my confidence sinking lower and lower. It was hopeless, I told myself. Completely, inarguably hopeless. I was stuck here, campaigning for my life in a room full of rabid vultures. There was nothing I could do, and, apparently, nothing that God could do either. I felt terrible—like someone had beaten me over the head with a bag of oranges. What was the use? Even if I were to somehow escape, where would I go at this point? What would I do? Would I go after Bugs again—hindered as I was—or would I cut and run instead? The latter seemed so much easier. Why had I never given it a shot before?

Confusion set in all throughout my body. Why _had_ I never given it a shot before? And then it all came back to me. This was never the way I'd intended it to happen. This was never the way that it was supposed to play out. I coughed. What if Wile E were to hear you now, Daffy? I asked myself. What would he say? Thoughts of defeat, an irrepressible downpour of sorrow, lack of confidence—when did that foolish downer's attitude ever factor into your vocabulary? When did that bland, uninspiring drivel begin to fill your head? This wasn't me, I thought. This wasn't even close to me. I wasn't one to give up that easily. I wasn't even one to consider it. Nothing inside me had changed. Nothing inside me had ever needed to change. I was who I was—only now without the arrogance. I took it all in stride and pressed on through each monumental challenge that laid itself before me. I'd been called many things throughout the course of my life, but never once had I been called a quitter. And I never would be.

My eye was gone. My body was drained. But I never was beaten. The five steps of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance—I'd been through all of them, and now they were all behind me. Success, I thought. How sweet it felt. Slowly I began to raise my head up off my chest. I looked at Bugs and I looked at Lola. The flow of blood was not quite as intense as before. My heart took it in confidence and carefully began to recover. The burgeoning headache—which had once been an almost unbearable addition—also began to gradually subside. I felt better—refreshed, even. My one eye took on the personality of both. I even—I even managed a—a smile—an actual smile. My eye was gone. My body was drained. But I never was beaten.

Time started all over again. Bugs turned away from me, allowing the scalpel to clatter noisily to the floor. Lola's gaze was stuck on him, even as he crossed stiffly to the other side of the room, peeled off his blood-stained gloves, and calmly began to wash his hands in an oddly out-of-place-looking sink that stood lonesomely in the corner. He reached for the soap.

Lola sputtered something underneath her breath. Her face looked so conflicted in the dim, orange-ish lighting. I'd never seen her like this. I'd never felt her presence as uniquely as I felt it now. It was stunning. So much life packed into such a small little figure.

She pursed her lips. "Bugs," she said, "Bugs. . . . " No reply. He was still scrubbing his hands clean of my blood, growing increasingly more vigorous with each new squelch of the soap, as though he were decontaminating himself of some strange, fatal disease.

"Bugs!" She tried again, louder this time, her voice growing hoarse. "Bugs, listen to me!" She was angry, piping hot with negative emotion.

"What?" He lifted his head and gazed intensely over his shoulder. "You don't have anything to say to me, Lola! Nothin'!" He shut the water off and spun quickly around, reaching for a towel. His hands were bleeding. He must've accidentally cut himself as he was washing them. Damn fingernails.

"I told ya' all 'da rules," he reminded her—he reminded _us,_ "I told ya' 'da way it worked! 'Dis is 'da way ya' wanted it, so don't fuckin' complain to me, alright?" He tossed the towel into the sink, furiously examining the long, narrow gash he'd left on his own hand. "Fuck." He swore.

"Bugs, you know this isn't right!" She cried, her voice trembling. "You smug son of a bitch! Not one fucking _bit_ of that was necessary!"

"Take it easy, dollface," he responded quietly, as though warning her, "take it easy."

"No, I _won't_ take it easy! You can't _make me_ take it easy! What? You think you're so big and fucking scary now? 'Cause you can hurt innocent people, you think you can fucking scare me? Fuck you, Bugs! Fuck you! You're the same stupid fucking prick as the one I married!"

"_Calm down._" His voice was stern and commanding, even if his eyes never left the floor. His hand went to his waist.

"No! Fuck that! I can't _be_ calm anymore, Bugs! I _can't!_ Not after this!"

She never saw the gun in his hand. She never noticed the vengeful look in his eyes.

"Why'd you have to hurt him, you motherfucking son of a bitch? _Why?_ You make me sick! You're disgusting! I _hate _you! You bastard, you fucking coward!"

I'd thought the very same thing earlier on, only I'd never spoken the words out loud. I knew better than that. Apparently, she didn't.

It happened in the blink of an eye. The words had barely left her mouth when Bugs's body snapped up straight like a frightened horse and he whirled around on his heels, unholstering the chrome-faced pistol at his waist. He shoved it out in front of him, pulling back the hammer like a trained motor function of his thumb as he took aim at her exposed forehead.

The gunshot was loud and clear and lit up the room like a giant flash of lightning. I jumped. The sound was impossible to get used to. Smoke swirled gently around Bugs's head for a moment like a strange, venomous serpent feasting on the bulk of his rage before finally dispersing into nothing as it rose silently up towards the ceiling.

Lola's face seemed to gradually become numb as each of her features loosened with a haunting spontaneity. The large, crimson red dot on her forehead took a moment to appear, and when it finally did, it began—also—to swell and to grow, finally peaking at about the size of a small golf ball, before a single, thin, and barely noticeable trickle of blood came rolling quietly down the bridge of her nose and all the way to the edge of her lips. All at once, then—as if she were drifting slowly off to sleep—each of her long, athletic muscles relaxed, and her body collapsed in on itself. Her head fell to her chest. She was motionless.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't even think. Was she—could she be . . . ? Her eyes—her eyes were still open—wide open and vacant. I gulped. She was . . . she was gone.

And what made it so much worse was the terrifying fact that I didn't feel a thing. Nothing—nothing at all—like stepping on ants. And that's when the truth finally began to dawn on me. I didn't love her. I didn't want her. I didn't even care for her. And neither did she. But I'd played into her hands nonetheless. It had all been an intricate little solution to a perceivably unsolvable problem. She must've known that one of us would have to die, and thus, she'd taken it upon herself to keep me alive and breathing no matter what the cost. Bugs wouldn't kill me without a witness. He'd already proved that more than once—first by attempting to kill me on the lot at Warner Bros., and second by hand-picking four accomplices to assist in my next _coup d'etat._ What the reasoning was behind it, I couldn't be sure, but I knew that humiliation seemed to be a favored tool of his.

Whatever the purpose, Lola had sacrificed herself—or so it seemed—so that I would have another shot at the crown. She wanted Bugs dead just as much as I did, but she knew that only I could properly end it for her. So perhaps we _had_ been connected in some way after all—not literally, of course, and certainly not sexually, but in a way that united us in search of the same goal. Her death had been an unfortunate one, yes, but also necessary in reaching our collective apex. She knew it even better than I did.

I looked at Bugs. For once, his face was difficult to read. To him, Lola may have been an annoyance. She may have been a thorn in his side and a loose end which he'd neglected to tie up. But regardless of each sprawling negative point, she'd also, at one point, been his wife, and even _he_ was not mechanical enough to simply ignore it.

Slowly he let the gun drop to his side. "Shame." He muttered, obviously affected by it himself. "She was one o' 'da prettier ones."

He stared at his hands. The one was still bleeding. His ears drooped even further down in front of his face. He became a stone in focus—completely unmovable, like a giant monolith in the middle of the road. Blood rolled down the side of the gun. He wrapped his fingers around it and squeezed. He shivered.

I knew what he was thinking. I could see it coming from a mile away. He'd been right all along. It took a special kind of person to kill—a bad person, an evil person—and now that he'd finally done it, even with two unsuccessful attempts under his belt, he wondered if he was really that same evil person as he'd described to me. Perhaps there was more good in him than I'd originally perceived, only it was so far buried that I'd never managed to glimpse it. Now, as he stood there in total vulnerability, however, I could finally begin to see it—just a drop.

A moment later, he pointed the gun at me, but I wasn't afraid of him anymore. I was all of ten steps ahead of him. There was no way that he would pull that trigger.

And I was right. The gun fell once more to his waist. He laughed half-heartedly.

"Can ya' believe it, Daffy? It's happened again. I can't kill ya'. I can't." Exhausted, he sat down on the floor, embracing his knees. "Wouldn't mean anything. Not now. Nobody around to watch, nothin' special to make it all complete. Bunch o' bullshit if ya' ask me. Ya' haven't even had 'da chance to live wit' 'dat lil' . . . _injury_ o' yers' yet. Ya' haven't . . . _suffered_ 'da way I want ya' to suffer yet. So I can't end 'dis here. What would be 'da point?" He gazed up at me, as though expecting an understanding nod. He didn't receive one.

"But 'den again," he went on, "I really don't wanna leave ya' here all by yerself, either." He pulled himself back up to his feet. "'Cause sooner or later, yer' gonna find a way outta 'dose handcuffs. I don't know how and I don't know when, but ya' will. And if ya' should happen to escape—even wit''dat eye missin'—only God knows what kinda trouble you'd try and start around here. So 'derein lies 'da dilemma. Kill ya' now or kill ya' later . . . and I _can't _kill ya' now."

He holstered his gun. "Rest assured, Daffy, I'm not happy about any o' 'dis, so whenever you should decide to . . . settle 'da score . . . please don't hesitate to call up to my office. It'll be a fun lil' adventure, I promise. Just don't forget to bring yer' sword."

He bid me farewell, obviously hoping to isolate himself as quickly as possible, for he no longer trusted in his forbearance. He'd shown me too much already and now he was all but powerless in this environment.

Slowly, then, he began to back away into the shadows, keeping his eyes focused on me at all times like a train receding ominously off into the distance. He didn't even flinch as he drifted slinkily past Lola's limp, dangling body on his way to the door, pausing only for a moment to twist the knob as he solemnly exited the room, slamming the door shut tightly behind him.

* * *

_Part III_

Stillness. That was all that remained.

It was raining outside. For the first time all night I could hear it. The relentless crescendo of voices and cacophonous emotion had finally been silenced. Now it was the distant and refreshingly organic '_pitter-patter_' of water droplets against the walls that took center stage.

Bugs's words were still with me. "Yer' gonna find a way outta 'dose handcuffs." He'd said. "I don't know how and I don't know when, but ya' will." As if on cue, then, I looked up, towards the ceiling and towards my hands, which were still bound there. He'd been right about one thing, I told myself. Hindered or not, I _would_ escape. It was either that or die, and I wasn't ready to die yet. That was a given.

I flexed my biceps in an unsuccessful attempt to tear down the pipe which locked me in place. No use, I conceded after a few moments of failure. I wasn't strong enough for that approach yet—and especially not while missing a whole pint of blood or two. Instead, I'd need to take another route. My eye fell on the scalpel which Bugs had left carelessly strewn out on the floor in front of me. If I could just reach it, I thought, I might be able to work something out.

Stretching my arms to their literal breaking points, I planted my center of gravity firmly over my left foot and reached out hopefully with my right, attempting to—if nothing else—graze the edge of the scalpel. The task, however, turned out to be largely easier said than done as I didn't come within five inches of the thing. Reluctantly, I decided to retire that approach as well.

Exhaling deeply with my heart still pounding thunderously inside my chest, I eventually allowed my bleary gaze to float inquisitively around the room. Nothing around to help me, I thought. Nothing. Nothing but walls and shadows and pipes—not to mention that unsettling orange light that seemed to bathe the entire room in a dark, fiery, furnace-like glow. It was making me queasy—but then again, that could've been caused by just about anything.

I ignored the pounding, blood-starved headache that rattled violently throughout my brain and set my eye loose once more on a second hopeful journey around the room. But still nothing stood out to me—nothing, except for Lola. Even in death she commanded my attention, and she seemed to be almost watching me. Perhaps she was.

I looked away. No time for that. I couldn't think about it—about her. She only reminded me of things that I didn't wish to be reminded of. A life which I'd left behind, a job and a paycheck, friends and family, a future, love and attraction—all of it without guns and blood and violence. Jokes and laughter, stage performances, rehearsals and line readings, a house and a wardrobe, money and expensive parties, health and well-being, training and exercise, Wile E . . . Coyote?

A surge of adrenaline rushed through my veins. I looked up at my hands again. Wile E Coyote, I thought. He'd been preparing me for this moment all along, without even realizing it. Handcuffs. I laughed. Fucking handcuffs. Bugs had actually had the audacity to put me in fucking handcuffs.

Another laugh, louder this time. I couldn't have broken the pipe, I knew, but the cuffs themselves—the chain, at least—offered me some small fraction of hope. Anxious as a frightened poodle, I balled my hands stiffly into fists and straightened my arms. I didn't have much time. I was growing weaker by the minute—running out of space, running out of energy, running out of everything. But my mind was set. There was only one task left to complete now. I would free myself and that would be it. That would be enough.

Shaking off the pain and disregarding Lola's vacant, yet oddly watchful stare, I planted my feet once more and exhaled deeply. This was it, I thought. This was all that I had left. And yet I'd never accomplished it before. This had been the one task which I had never bested—the one task which I had never completed—and Wile E, I knew, had always been deeply troubled by it. Why was I so inept? He must've thought. Why was I so unspeakably frightened by it? What was it about this one situation which always seemed to force me into grateful submission? Perhaps the same would be true of this moment. Perhaps tonight I would feel the cold sting of defeat all over again. Perhaps Bugs had already won.

Fuck it. Kill 'em all.

I wrenched my arms apart like two solid steel bars and winced as the chrome-plated cuffs bit harshly into my skin. My eyelids fell shut—one an unharmed, simplistic function of my face, the other a limp, lifeless flap draped uselessly in front of a large black hole. My tongue slid crookedly out from inside my beak and I bit down vigorously upon it like an alligator decapitating its prey. My heels eased up off the floor. I held my breath. The blood pumped harder up my legs and up my arms and throbbed like a broken oil rig as it reached the enormous pipeline through my neck and to my brain before finally recycling the process all over again.

My arms continued to pull without stoppage, slowly fracturing each of the stubborn links in the chain. I'd never felt like this before, I thought. It hurt. It hurt more than I'd ever expected it to, and yet I loved it. I loved every second of it. There was something special about the feeling it conveyed—the feeling of being trapped, the feeling of being caught so helplessly in the dire straits between life and death. And there was something even more special about the thrill of success—about pulling out the winning field goal in the final seconds of the game. It was blissful—like all-natural ecstasy—like a shot in the arm or love at first sight. It was brilliant. But it came wrapped up in a maelstrom of agony.

I didn't stop, not even to breathe. Air was unneeded at the moment—a petty distraction from the task at hand. My lungs could burn all they wanted. They wouldn't accomplish a thing. The bones in my forearms began to bend stubbornly outwards like fresh tree branches collected off the forest floor. My face grew balmy with sweat. Not even Superman had possessed this much courage, I told myself. Not even Superman had displayed this much drive to succeed. The chain stretched its very atoms like an unbreakable rubber band as the pulsating veins in my neck suddenly began to protrude.

It felt as though I were only a few mere instances away from tearing myself in half. My entire body had gone tense. My toes could've dug directly into the floor had I commanded them to. My heart was hammering away inside my throat. I couldn't stop yet, but I had to—I wanted to. Wile E had always made it look so easy, so why, now, did it seem so discouragingly difficult?

The cold steel tore deeper into my wrists—past the thick layer of feathers and right to the flesh. Blood rolled in tiny red teardrops down my arms as I continued to pull, burning like an enormous lantern from top to bottom. Again, I ignored it. My lungs were starving for oxygen, but I couldn't break my stride—not yet, not after I'd come so far already. I squeezed my eyelids shut tighter as the monumental apex of pressure slowly began to choke me death—crushing me from the inside-out, squashing me like an empty can of soda.

I couldn't take much more of this. I would surely die first—without a doubt—yet somehow I just kept on pulling, turning my insides to mush, cleaving my brain into tiny little pieces. There was even more blood on my arms now—considerable amounts—and my one empty eye socket had sprung yet another leak. I was too weak to go on—too drained and too empty—suffocating myself like some sort of suicidal maniac. My head was going to explode, I knew it. Any second now. Any . . . second . . .

'_Snap!_' My arms flew out to my sides and my knees buckled like two broken table legs. I landed on them with a thud, breaking my fall with my open palms. I froze.

It was all over. I'd done it. I was free.

I stared at my hands—my fingers limp and exhausted, blood trailing all down my forearms. Freedom. The word repeated itself over and over inside my head. Freedom—just as I'd promised myself. Freedom—the one thing that Bugs had always feared. Freedom.

Death would have to wait—at least for now.

I glanced up at Lola. Her eyes were shut. She'd seen enough. I'd accomplished what I'd set out to do and now she could finally rest. It was only then that I truly began to realize just how much she'd accomplished in her final moments. Her intervention had been a miracle—a miracle that had saved my life—the very miracle that I had prayed for, even if I had taken losses in the process. I thanked her . . . as best I could.

Three or four large droplets of blood on the floor in front of me helped bring me screaming back to reality—dark crimson pools spread out in radial star-bursts against the stone. Gingerly, I slid the shattered handcuffs off my wrists and held a single tremulous hand to my resoundingly vacant eye socket. Nothing there, I thought to myself. Nothing there. I drew back my hand in time to catch another faint whiff of warm blood at the edge of my fingertips. Nothing there, I repeated acceptingly. Nothing there.

I paused, but only for a moment, as the mortifying thought of infection began to creep stealthily into my head. Alcohol, iodine—something to kill the germs—that's what I needed. Bandages for my wrists, gauze, some clean water, some soap. Down on all fours, I threw myself in the direction of the table—atop of which my sword awaited eagerly for my return. Ignoring it, I hastily grabbed hold of the large plastic medical box that stood humbly in the corner, hobnobbing awkwardly with a dozen or so other assorted weapons. Leaning up against the sturdy table leg for lack of strength, I carefully laid the box down on the concrete floor beside me and pried it open with shaky fingers.

The cover slid back easily and I thrust my hands in like an overanxious surgeon, desperately sifting through the contents. Iodine, iodine, iodine, I repeated to myself, quickly unloading the box of its dozen or so brown prescription bottles and setting them all carelessly down on the floor next to me. A few moments later, I emerged successfully.

"Iodine." The label read. "Apply gently to infected area. May cause skin lesions if used improperly. Avoid contact with nose, mouth, and eyes." No problem there. I unscrewed the cap. The bottle was full. Good. Now all I needed was some gauze.

Luckily, a small packet lay at the bottom of the box underneath a sealed bag of syringes. I worked my fingers around inside and carefully removed one of the thick balls of cotton, holding it up to the dim orange light as if to make sure it were the real thing.

Wait, I thought. Wasn't I supposed to clean the wound first? That's what my mother had always taught me. "Don't just drown it in alcohol." She'd said. "Make sure you scrub it first." Sounded like a good enough idea to me. Mother knows best, right?

The very thought of her, in fact, brought back distant memories. I was playing on the sidewalk just outside our house—hopping over each of the rough, uneven cracks in the concrete like an extremely selective grasshopper—when suddenly, my foot caught on the slightly upturned edge of one misshapen tile in particular and I went tumbling head-over-heels.

A few moments later, I rose to a somewhat less jovial sitting position and tenderly rubbed at my head. I didn't seem to be hurt, I thought. But then I caught a glimpse of my knee. Not only had the skin been pulled back and the brownish-reddish layers underneath exposed, but a bunch of tiny black speckles and dirt fragments lay strewn about on top, like icing on the cake. I prodded it with a curious index finger.

Blood bubbled to the surface—lots of it, according to my fragile, six-year-old mind—and I screamed. I screamed like I'd never screamed before—at least up until that point—and I cried. I cried my eyes out at the very sight of it. Blood—dark red and goopy—symbolizing of pain. But it didn't hurt. It didn't hurt at all. I couldn't even feel it. I'd blocked it all out.

It didn't take long for my mother to notice. She swept me up into her arms like a protective cocoon and hurriedly carried me back inside the house, consoling me all the way. She sat me down on the couch and ran some hot water in the sink, dousing a small washcloth with hand soap and squeezing it out like a sponge before racing back across the room to rescue me from all the sick, disgusting blood that seemed to slowly be consuming my leg. She straightened out my knee with one hand on my calf and the other at the back of my thigh and gently began to dab at the dangerously open wound.

Instantly, it stung like a scorpion's whip, but a swift "shush!" from her bill kept me from crying out loud.

"Goodness gracious," she muttered playfully, "you'd think someone dropped an anvil on your head the way you went about screamin' like that."

I couldn't hear her. All that mattered to me was the blood.

She disinfected the scrape and it began to hurt even more, yet I worked with all my might to try and hide it.

"You should be more careful out there next time." She applied the bandage. "Someday I might not be around to help you. Someday you're gonna have to take care of yourself, y'know, and you can't always rely on the kindness of others."

She placed her hand tenderly against my cheek. It was warm. Her feathers were soft and fuzzy—so much unlike my own rough, uneven plumage. Instantly I could feel my heart rate plummet and my eyes go dry. Her touch alone was healing enough. I smiled.

"I will, mom." I said shakily. "I will."

My eyelids shot open and I ruffled my feathers intensely. I was dozing off, falling back into a spiderweb of distant memories. I couldn't allow that to happen. Not now. Not yet. I needed to focus. I needed to concentrate. There were plenty more important things going on in the world right now than pointless nostalgia trips.

Reluctantly, I placed the gauze back in the bag and slowly re-capped the iodine, savoring all that remained of that beautifully comforting flashback. Mother knows best, I repeated.

Gingerly, then, I dragged myself to my feet using the tabletop for support and staggered weakly across the room to the sink Bugs had used not fifteen minutes earlier to wash his hands. Clutching the sides of the porcelain bowl like a dying hawk, I allowed my body to lean stubbornly into it as I glanced up morosely at the square mirror situated on the wall in front of me.

Undead—it was the only way to accurately describe my face. Dried up blood and balmy sweat smeared grossly all down the side of my cheek and my bill was streaked with grime. I could smell it—stale and unsavory. I looked as though I'd been caught in a wildfire somewhere and savagely burned beyond all recognition. I looked different—completely different. Never had I realized—up until this very moment—just how much character was actually invested in those two big black-and-white eyes of mine. And now, with only one remaining, I appeared more damaged and obsolete than ever before—like an old, out-of-stock robot in a campy sci-fi flick.

I switched on the water with a quick twist of the dial and interred my hands eagerly within its spray, splashing a few renegade drops onto my face as the faucet slowly began to heat up. The water was surprisingly clear, I thought—clear, at least, for a dimly-lit dungeon buried beneath an enormous parking garage. I cupped my hands into a small bowl and dunked my face into it, letting the water wash refreshingly over my feathers and seep delicately into my skin. I reached for the soap.

There was something restful about this slow, subconscious routine—something warm and welcoming, something that gradually brought to mind a dozen or so other situations just like it. I felt as though I were only now awakening from a foolishly long, yet resoundingly reposeful hibernation, drowsily wiping the dried up crust out of my . . . eye.

I was careful not to dig too deep as I scrubbed the sticky, glue-like remnants of blood away from my sharp, ebony feathers. I was beginning to look more normal now. My face was clear again—clearer, at least, than before—presentable, even, save for the huge, dark crater which stood out every bit as boldly as black against white where my right eye once stood. I ignored it. Staring at it only made it worse.

I dropped the soap conclusively into the center of the sink and blindly shut the water off. There, I thought, running my fingers smoothly over the surface of my skull. All better.

And it _was_ all better. I could barely carry myself and my entire body seemed to float along languidly in space as though all gravitational pull had suddenly been cut, yet—at the same time—I felt, somehow, endlessly more complete than I had before.

Another long, laborious duck season filled with terror and torture, I told myself—and now it was all finally over. I'd suffered losses, yes, and I'd made sacrifices along the way, but was I not stronger now because of it? Was I not committed even more so to my ambitious goals than ever before? If anything, this night had accomplished nothing for Bugs but to scrawl a messy, boldfaced name across his respective death warrant. Now it was my turn to do the hunting, I thought. Now it was my turn to catch a body. Almost. First I needed to actually finish what had already been started—to close one door before I opened another and to reestablish my bearings before I set off again aimlessly.

With that in mind, I allowed myself reluctantly to slump down, exhausted, against the crooked leg of Bugs's coveted weaponry table, embracing my knees like a lonesome child as I again rifled through the disorderly contents of his quaint, suspiciously-stocked, makeshift medical kit. There was little time to examine the validity of each individual drug locked inside, but I wasn't worried. Why would Bugs bother to poison them? If he'd truly planned on killing me in some weird, twisted, and utterly grandiose fashion, a few anonymous sprinkles of potassium cyanide certainly weren't the way to go about it.

So, again—unworried—I slowly uncapped the small, brass-colored bottle of iodine and gently wet the fluffy fibers of a single ball of gauze—holding it all the while as though it were a smoldering chunk of coal—and fearlessly swabbed it all along the surface of my gaping, empty eye socket, cringing in pain as the chemicals went to work on any unsuspecting germs that may have been present. It burned—just like everything else that had happened to me that night—an uncomfortable, unsettling feeling which had only grown since its conception, and that now seemed to hang so hauntingly over my head like the vengeful souls of all the men I'd killed. Nothing could silence their screams. They were with me until the bitter end—distasteful and full of hate.

I wet another piece, and then another—coating them all with a thin, yet fully-encompassing layer of alcohol—and carefully packed each piece, like an enormous glob of Spackle, into the sepulchral, wide-open hole, stuffing them in deeper and holding them in place with three spindly, delicately trembling fingers. The pain never went away. It was only heightened. But then again, that's what I'd wanted all along, right? Sterilization. Safety. Cleanliness. Life.

I straightened my legs out in front of me and dove again into the hard plastic medical kit, rummaging around through each clearly defined section like some sort of curious animal, searching for anything useful that I may have missed during my previous endeavors. Pain killers, not today; syringes, nothing special; tweezers, unnecessary.

And then I stopped. What was this? Something black, something indefinable in shape, stitched from heavy-duty fabric yet still soft to the touch. I held it up to the light. An eyepatch—like what the pirates used to wear, like what the nameless, baseless villains in old _Film Noir_ movies used to wear. I ran it inquisitively through my fingers. Was _I_ . . . going to wear it? The entire concept seemed strange and foreign to me—the very thought of it, in fact. Me? An eyepatch? Like Bazooka Joe? Like Emilio Largo? Like Slick Rick and Snake Plissken?

It was perfectly logical, I knew—smart, even—to wear it, but, at the same time, it sent an enormous shiver of fear rolling unsympathetically down my spine. Just what had I become? Just what had this seemingly endless mission for revenge actually made of me? I was completely different now from the duck I once was; injured, humiliated, dark, disturbed, murderous, primal, evil—everything I'd always hated. So why—with so many glaring, unspeakably obvious warning signs—had I allowed myself to fall so blindly and unthinkingly onto this path?

I didn't give it anymore thought. I didn't need to. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how deeply I racked my brain, I'd never be able to come up with the answer—never in a million years. So I let it go, and I slid the band tightly around my skull, adjusting the patch to stand firmly in place of my shadowed, gauze-filled eye socket like an unmoving sentry.

There. That was better. Not quite as distracting as before, and the added tightness which the patch provided seemed to alleviate some of the larger sensations of vulnerability which had previously crept in and out of my head. Problem solved.

I relaxed my shoulders and sighed deeply through my nostrils. It was done, I thought. Everything was done—everything that _could_ be done, at least. And yet, for some radically unsympathetic reason, I was still far too weak to reprise my mission—or even to stand for that matter.

So I didn't. I didn't stand. I didn't even move. Instead, I sat and I stared, waiting patiently for my heartbeat to slowly regain its composure. My limbs felt heavy and cold and went numb at the wrists and ankles like four uselessly bloody stumps. My veins pumped lethargically at the back of my neck and my tongue felt dry and sandpapery. But the worst was over, I kept telling myself. The worst was over. Nothing could hurt me anymore. Not one thing.

I allowed my head sink tremulously down onto my chest and brought my knees up closer to my chin for warmth. I could fall asleep right here if I really wanted to, I thought. Sleep. How long had it been? How long had it been since I'd actually _willingly_ allowed myself to sleep? Pepé's bar? Was that it? Had it really been that long? It all seemed so distant and blurry to me now. I could barely remember what Pepé even looked like, let alone any assistance he may have provided me with. And Felix—what had become of him? Where was he right now? And where was my wife? Where, of all places, had she gone? Would she take me back? After all of this, would she take me back?

Thoughts of my mother crept slowly back into my head. What would she have said to me were she still alive today—still alive and by side in the hour of my greatest need?

I didn't have to imagine it. I knew just what she would've done.

She'd have knelt down beside me and looked me in the eye and placed a gentle, consoling hand on my shoulder and whispered softly in my ear: "I couldn't bear to watch it, Daffy. What he did to you, I mean."

I would've nodded sullenly and looked away, avoiding her gaze, but she wouldn't have had it. Like any truly loving parent, she would've reached out stubbornly and raised my chin all by herself, as though to inject some small manner of pride into my already sunken chest, and continued on obliviously: "She was right, you know—the girl, Lola. He only hates you because he envies you. He envies everything about you. And he knows that—no matter how many times he chews you up and spits you out—that you'll _always_ just get right back up and try again as if it never happened. And, for that, he hates you. He'll always hate you."

Calmly, then, her eyes began to well up with tears as she slowly wrapped her arms around me in a soft, motherly embrace.

"But you're a good boy, Daffy." She added quietly. "No matter what happens to you, son, you're a good boy. And I know you can get out of this alive if you put your mind to it. Trust me. No one's stopping you anymore. You've got the whole world in the palm of your hands. You just need to make sure you look before you leap this time, that's all. Trust me."

I held her close—my only friend left in the world, my only acquaintance, and she wasn't even real.

"I love you, Daffy." She murmured gently into my ear.

"I love you, too, mom." I said aloud, tensely clenching my hands into fists. _She wasn't even real._

My eyelids quickly fluttered open. I was still sitting there—still in the same exact position as before. I hadn't moved an inch—and now she was gone. _She was gone._

I worked desperately to try and block out the pain and the yearning and the world all around me—to try and bring her back, to try and remember what she'd looked like. _She was gone. _My entire body contracted inwards upon itself as I drew my arms and legs in closer to me and curled up into a tight little ball. _She was gone. _I could barely make out her shape anymore—even as it floated mistily throughout all the dust and fog that hung so thickly and stickily inside my head like a million enormous paintings sliding constantly in and out of focus.

She was gone—but it didn't matter.

My mind repeated the words over and over again like an obsessive liquid mantra, pouring delicately—in great sheets of milk and syrup—over my brain. She may not have been real, I told myself, but I had felt her touch nonetheless, and, again, it had somehow managed to heal me in ways I previously wouldn't have thought possible—in ways that seemed almost ghostly or supernatural due, simply, to their miraculous speed and clarity.

I remembered the feeling—the warmth and security which she had provided—her arms wrapped tightly around my shoulders. It stripped me abruptly of all my worries and concerns and instead left me loose and livid and feeling more alive than ever before.

My limbs felt suddenly supercharged with natural energy. My heart rate slowed to that of a lonesome metronome. My lungs took deeper, longer, more fulfilling breaths and my head finally stopped throbbing. I was all better, I thought—somehow recovered from a completely crippling, cold-blooded injury. I could move again. I could think again. I could stand again.

So I did. The time had finally come for me to act—to pick up where I'd left off and to begin anew, rejuvenated. But it was no longer a mission or a goal that I was after—not anymore. Instead it had become less of a wish and more of an inevitability. I now knew it to be true. Bugs Bunny would be dead before sunrise. It was absolutely guaranteed.

I straightened my eyepatch, allowing the elastic to snap back stingingly against the back of my head and turned quickly to face the surface of the table I'd been leaning on. Knives and short swords; stilettos and daggers; nothing the least bit interesting save the sword that Wile E had given me. Its eerie, incandescent glow grew stronger as I reached for it, strangling the pitch black sheath with eagerly anticipating fingers. I slid the blade free a few inches—as if to say hello—and then replaced it calmly at my side.

My gaze flicked dangerously towards the door—the only realistic way in and out of this hellhole. Two guards were standing watch outside, I knew it—the very same men who'd shackled me to the ceiling at the beginning of this whole traumatic ordeal. It seemed like ages ago.

My feet acted with little hesitation, carrying me quickly and confidently towards the door, and past Lola's skeletal, unmoving body. I tried not to look, but at the same time, felt as though I were obligated to. Perhaps it was all some weird, subconscious part of the healing process.

She looked cold and she looked pale. The blood had already begun to sink and settle down towards her feet. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was closed. Everything about her, now, looked surprisingly orderly. She was quiet—finally able to rest, fulfilled.

I didn't stop moving. She wouldn't have wanted me to. She was dead, yes, but she was also very peaceful.

I looked away, averting my attention elsewhere. Two shadows at either side of the crack beneath the door. Two of Bugs's mercenaries—one on the right and one on the left. I stopped just short of the door frame and hesitated, holding my sword close. I wouldn't need it this time. One on two was an easy feat to accomplish. I wouldn't even have to kill them.

My feathers vanished suddenly into the darkness—black on black, shadows upon shadows. I glanced down observantly at myself. Clothes would've been helpful at a time like this, but again, Bugs had made it his prerogative to force me into a corner and to make me feel as brazenly discomforted as he possibly could. In a way, I suppose, he'd succeeded—even if it _were_ only in the dim confines of his own twisted imagination. He hadn't one-upped me yet.

Anxiously, I set my sights once again on the door in front of me. Clothed or not, I was headed through it firing on all cylinders. Five moves—that was all it would take. Nothing fancy.

I slid my left foot back and brought my right foot forward, slowly raising my fists up to my beak and flexing my muscles like an artful hydraulics system. Clear, concise, straight to the point. Don't dilly-dally. Finish what he started, then dash off the premises.

Everybody on my list was dead—everybody, except for one.

I smashed through the door with my left foot and immediately planted myself, spinning to the left with my opposite leg outstretched and drawing the contact. He never saw it coming. Doubling back, then, I kicked again, this time to my right, and sent the other guard stumbling back. The first one had recovered. I caught his head in both hands as he came up for the counterstrike and drove it back down just as my knee came up for the kiss. His helmet shattered into a million tiny pieces and stray parts fell everywhere. The second one slunk up noiselessly behind me, hoping to drop me with his outstretched Taser, but my elbow was already on its way to his face. His feet slipped out from underneath him and he landed hard on his back, crying out in shock as the wind escaped his lungs.

Silence was all that followed.

My neck craned slowly upwards and my gaze flicked excitedly around the room as I quietly surveyed my surroundings. Not much to see, I thought—bland, white walls all around me, a narrow, unmarked staircase up ahead, smooth, concrete floors, no windows. I reset myself and dropped my defensive stance, quickly shutting the door behind me. I couldn't bear to turn around as long as it was still open. Somehow the very thought of peering curiously back over my shoulder into the fiery darkness which had once surrounded me seemed eerily reminiscent of all the time I'd spent in that coma—an unwanted product of Bugs's murdering bullet.

Instead, I gazed down at the two unmoving soldiers who now lay unconscious at my feet. Neither of them had stood a chance. They were both slim and of considerably muscular build—athletic and well-trained—yet the one who'd stood off to my left appeared noticeably taller—six-foot-six or slightly more, perhaps. Conveniently enough, however, the other seemed to measure in at just about my height—five-foot-eight on a day of particularly good posture. I knelt down beside him. His clothes might've hung a bit baggy on me, I decided, but it was better than nothing.

I slid the thick, heavyweight, bulletproof vest off his chest and tossed it unenthusiastically to the side. Kevlar was for soldiers, not for vigilantes. Next, I undid all the straps, holsters, and bandoleers wrapped tightly around his arms, legs, waist, chest, and ankles. Most of them were empty anyway—he hadn't been all that heavily armed to begin with. Nothing but a stun gun and a dagger—mere children's toys on both sides of the weapon family.

His rough, polyester uniform left a lot to be desired in the place of comfort, but I was in no position to complain. Once I'd pulled the pants on over my thin, spindly legs, I gingerly snugged up the belt and snapped shut each of the small, metallic shirt buttons like a soldier preparing for war. I even wore the boots, lacing them up tight as to achieve the proper spring in my step.

Safety and security had come easily enough—for now, at least—but there was still no telling what excessive and overly dangerous ploys Bugs may have had stashed up his sleeves, waiting for me almost certainly with open arms of fire and acid.

My gaze shifted abruptly, then, from the motionless, nearly-naked sentry lying unconscious before me to the narrow, darkened staircase just a stone's throw away down the corridor. Stenciled into each pearly-white wall—I could see—and on either side, were a pair of sharp, red "ACME" logos, large and crimson and eerily reminiscent of those old familiar "biohazard" warnings printed on the sides of hospital trash cans.

I made my way up the stairs, taking them two and sometimes three at a time, clenching my sword tightly in my right hand and rounding each corner like a gold medal Olympiad. Just above me, I thought—not too far ahead—must've been the entrance to the parking garage.

I continued up another flight, never breaking my stride, astounded at just how well I'd recovered in the face of things, when suddenly I came skidding to a halt. A short string of bold letters had just passed inconsequentially through my damaged field of vision, and if I'd read them correctly . . .

I turned my shoulders and anxiously glanced back for a second look.

"Armory," it said—thick, boldface print spread across the angel-white surface of the door, every bit as clear and vivid as black ink on paper.

I froze dead in my tracks. Was it for real? I asked myself. Had ACME actually installed a second, true-to-life armory in addition to their first, packing it full up, instead, with genuinely uninhibited weapons—or was this simply just another, smaller collection of props playing sidekick to all the rest? Considering just how shady the company had become as of late—no doubt due, in part, to Bugs's maniacal influence—I wouldn't have been surprised either way.

There was apparently no lock on the door, and the glaringly conspicuous absence of a visible keypad or touch-tone sensor of any kind allowed me to barge right in unimpeded. My hands went searching up and down the side walls just past the threshold, hastily attempting to locate the nearest light switch before any sort of hidden ambush could be set into motion.

A few moments later, my fingers grazed the edge of the tiny nub and the entire room flickered suddenly to life, accompanied instantly by the ominous, foreboding hum of dim fluorescent light bulbs.

My eye slid quickly back into focus, assuredly adjusting to the awkwardly bothersome glare. Every wall, for as far as I could see—from corner to corner—was lined unscrupulously with an innumerable number of mounted weapons—and not just any weapons, either. These were advanced training and combat models—state of the art and cutting edge in almost every way.

Automatic rifles and pistols hobnobbed lovingly with their semi-automatic counterparts. Boxes and barrels of loaded magazines and grenades lay idle beneath racks and rows of combat shotguns. Hand guns, long guns, machine guns—some illegal—and a wide variety of other brutal assault weapons painted a gruesome yet tempting palette of destruction all around me. Night vision goggles, EMP charges, "Second Chance" bulletproof vests, and crates upon crates of assorted bullets—everything from flat noses to hollow points—helped round out the collection.

I knew that if I truly hoped to survive within the upcoming hours, I'd almost certainly need some substantial firepower on my side as a guaranteed means of success, yet not even _I_ was greedy enough to snatch up every last big, hulking, murderous gun in sight. It was a nice collection, I conceded, but nothing more. And besides, I was still just as suspicious as ever of their legitimacy.

Soothingly, then, I ran a hand through the nearest barrel of bullets, allowing the cold, sharp lead to sift gently through my fingers. They seemed real, I thought, and they certainly had some weight to them—not hollow and emptied-out like blanks so often felt. No, these ones were different, and they didn't seem to have any specifically visible markings on them to testify to their being fake either. My confidence level slowly began to rise.

Curious as a foreign cat in the Bronx, I calmly reached out with both hands and safely removed a straggling Beretta 92F semi-automatic pistol from its low perch on a nearby wall, quickly loading it up with a clip and pulling back the slide. The familiarly fearsome, ratchet-like sound came like music to my ears as the first round was snapped securely up into the firing chamber. I held it fiendishly out in front of me, wrapping my left hand steadily around my right—fingers on fingers—and taking careful aim at a small, portrait-sized mirror hung crookedly on the wall across from me.

Wasting no time, then, I quickly depressed the trigger, only to watch in awe as the mirror shattered suddenly into a thousand tiny, diamond-shaped fragments—abruptly deconstructed like deflected raindrops off the roof of a car—and the thunderous crash of the bullet's escape echoed like sonar off of every wall and every surface.

I could barely believe it. They were real. I dropped the gun to the floor. They were real, I repeated. They were as real as real could be.

I didn't waste another second. My feet carried me methodically from one side of the room to the other in a blind fit of excitement as I gleefully cast my starry-eyed gaze over each and every gun, knife, and grenade in sight. I'd need to limit my selection to about two—maybe three if they were small enough—and still be able to maintain mobility. Luckily, a few moments later, I managed to locate a thin, fireproof tote bag of sorts in a heap on the floor just behind several large, wooden crates of armor-piercing bullets. It wasn't a huge bag by any means, but it would do just fine for the occasion.

Then, slipping my head carefully underneath the dark fabric shoulder strap so that it hung safely to the right of my waist, anchored in place by my stiff, white-ringed neck, I hastily began to scour the room for the appropriate weapons. Several dozen appeared good enough to make the cut, but only a few seemed totally reliable. I weighed the possibilities—all the pros and cons and potential drawbacks of each—before making my final decision: two black, semi-automatic Glock 17s—one with optional suppressor—and a lightweight Mossberg 590 combat shotgun, including plenty of extra clips and shells for each.

This would be no struggle, I told myself, no epic battle for survival. It would be nothing more than a well-calculated slaughter. I was going to win this time—no matter what words were said, no matter what doubts were cast—and I was going to do it simply, without spilling one more drop of blood from my veins. I would emerge triumphant and victorious, having easily squashed my opponents, whomever and however many of them I might encounter. None of them would be ready in time.

So I left the armory, Glock in hand, shouldering the shotgun having secured my sword safely to the side of my waist, and I climbed the stairs with absolute gusto, visualizing every last immaculate second of my upcoming hour of glory. Bugs Bunny was a dead rabbit, and he knew it. He stood no chance of survival as long as I remained determined in finishing off what he'd started. All along, I knew, he'd been the only one who I'd truly desired to kill—the only one who'd ever really mattered to me from the get-go. All the others had been nothing but mere distractions—bland, unmoving obstacles in place of a greater goal. And yet, at the same time, they'd each served their purpose. I was sure, had I never confronted them, I would've almost certainly perished in the face of all the great, inhumane challenges which had already succeeded in leveling me more than once tonight. I was lucky to have made it this far, and I was thankful to have learned so much about myself in the process.

Thus, I headed for the parking garage in a raging storm of anticipation, picking up my stride, taking longer steps, and relishing in each new moment as my body quickly began to work itself back into a groove. Surely the path which I now traversed would eventually lead me straight through the shimmering front gates of ACME headquarters, sword in hand, intent only on dispatching my final antagonizers—intent only on vanquishing what little remained of my foes.

And so I continued on without ever stopping to rest, finally able—after so much time spent on pain and suffering—to cross that long, rickety bridge to the final chapter.

See you on the other side.

_End of Chapter Nine._


	10. Rabbit Season

_Chapter Ten: __**Rabbit Season**_

I'm doing this for you. I hope you understand that. It's the only reason I'm still here, the only reason I'd bother finishing what I started. Something had to be done about this mess—something concrete, something real. I figured I was the only one detached enough to pull it off.

That's how I got here—in case you've already forgotten—that's why everything's so damn complicated. I tend to do that to people. I tend to do that to everything I touch. I complicate it, I bring out the worst in it. I aggravate it and scratch at it and until it bleeds.

I'm a cancer, a parasite. People hate me. My friends hate me. _You _hate me.

But I love the attention. I love the notoriety. That's why I do it. That's why I'll continue to do it. That's why I'll always be here: for you.

The rabbit knew I'd make it out alive. He knew I'd arm myself. He knew everything. As usual, he was the overseer of all, the one in control, the puppet master, the only chess piece that really mattered. His position didn't rattle me. Even if I was destined to fail, destined to remain that same fucking daffy duck who never did anything right, I had to try. I had to prove, if nothing else, that it _couldn't_ be done. Then at least I could die as stubbornly as I'd lived.

I went through the door at the top of the stairway and entered the parking garage and took cover behind the nearest pillar, scanning my surroundings. A row of parked cars, hoods asymmetrical. Concrete and metal and glass. Light scarce and scattered, flickering in and out. At the far end another pillar, marked off with a bright yellow stripe and the letter A.

There were no surprises left to be had—none whatever. I'd seen them all before; challenged them, confronted them, failed to dismantle them, failed to stem the tide, failed at everything, as always.

I set the gun down and reached into my bag for a suppressor. Bugs and I were both so different now, so warped and twisted and confused. Even our shared history was all awash and sucked away. The traitor, the killer, the casualties.

Suppressor in place, I leveled the pistol and practiced my aim. With only one eye functional I'd need to get in as close as possible before taking potshots at anybody. Shouldering my bag I lowered myself to the pavement and peered around the corner, but there was nothing to see.

Outside the rain hissed intensely, distant and white, like a blizzard of TV snow, echoing off the walls and reverberating in circles all around me. Lightning and thunder flashed in tandem, sending chills spiraling down the base of my spine, enhancing my senses, improving my posture, my drive, pulling me abruptly to my feet. My fingers wrapped tightly around the handle of the gun. I exhaled slowly.

I wouldn't fail. Not this time. I couldn't.

Planting one foot I turned and swiveled, swinging the rest of my body around the back end of the Cadillac, brandishing the gun out in front of me, eye scanning back and forth for signs of movement. There were none.

My legs carried me further, dragging me along like a disobedient dog down the long, narrow line of inanimate vehicles as I approached, on tiptoe, the elevator shaft at the far end of the garage. But I wasn't in the clear just yet. A sudden outcry of voices sent me dashing soundlessly for cover behind a nearby silver sport sedan.

I pressed my back against the car door and gingerly lowered myself once more to the tarmac, never allowing my trigger finger to wander. Off in the distance, the voices continued to chatter uninterrupted, their words repeatedly drowned out by the incessant thunder and rainfall. They were coming from up ahead, and they hadn't noticed me yet. There was still an undeniable air of flippancy about them, a certain uncaring wobble.

Remaining close to the ground, I silently crept around the back end of the car and pointed myself in the direction of their voices, picking up a few brief, errant words between each explosive crash of lightning: "guns," "kill," "fire at will," like a description of my own thoughts.

They were soldiers—mercenaries, just like the ones downstairs—hired and handpicked by Bugs Bunny himself: the cream of the crop if there ever was such a thing. I tightened my grip on the gun for what seemed like the thousandth time and anxiously gulped down what little saliva was left in my mouth. Aim wide and to the right. Don't hesitate—two in the sternum, one in the head, finish the job, get it done right, and get out.

I was closing in on them now, edging constantly nearer. With each step I could hear their voices harking back soundly, gaining slowly in volume as I approached with bitter fury pulsing through my veins.

"Kill," again the word repeated itself. They were talking about me, talking about killing me, actually discussing it like gentlemen—as if they had the right.

Suddenly I was right on top of them, only a few yards away, crouched behind an oversized pickup truck, my mind running laps around the building, my arms and legs coiled up like an agitated snake waiting to strike. Not another word.

One of their two-way radios chirped like an injured chicken and an unfamiliar voice came crackling noisily through the receiver: "Any sign of him yet?"

"Nope," one of the men replied, slowly loosening his radio. "Don't worry. We'll check in with you as soon as we spot anything."

"Sorry," countered the anonymous dispatcher, slightly annoyed with his own request, "but the rabbit says that isn't good enough."

"Not good enough? What's he want now?"

"Status reports every twenty minutes, no exceptions."

"Oh, God," a predictable snort. "For what?"

"I don't know. It's getting late. I guess he doesn't want people falling asleep out there."

"With all due respect," a brief pause, riddled with irritation and sarcasm, "we're trying to do our jobs down here. It's a little difficult to concentrate when he's got us glancing at the clock every five seconds. I mean, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. They don't call him _Daffy_ for nothing."

The words had barely left his mouth before a bullet ripped wildly past his ear and torched the wall behind him. He flinched, but only for a second. My aim was off. I readjusted. Three more cracks sounded, like a whip striking violently against the back of a horse, sending a barrage of lead burrowing hard into his chest like a pack of hungry wolves. The Kevlar vest he wore over his midsection brought each bullet to a screeching halt, but not in time to quell the force of each crippling impact. He staggered backwards and collapsed against the wall, unconscious.

His partner barely had the chance to react. Only now were his hands beginning to reach for the gun at his waist. I moved in closer, each step discouraging him until eventually he froze, like a deer in the headlights. He didn't have the guts to pull anything looney.

"Put the gun on the ground and kick it towards me," I demanded unblinkingly.

He did as he was told, never quite breaking my fragmented gaze, his eyes staring deeply past the gun in my hand and the feathers on my face, peering vehemently into my soul. I knelt down slowly and carefully tossed the gun into the bag at my waist, quickly replacing a hand on the butt of my own weapon, holding it steady.

"Good," I muttered hastily. "Now turn around and face the wall."

Again, he did as he was told.

"Interlock your fingers behind your head."

And again.

"Just keep an eye out, alright?" the radio dispatcher carried on obliviously.

("Not a word," I warned my captive.)

"I'll take care of the boss. Until then, you just stay alert and concentrate on catching this son of a bitch. Out."

Then, as though it had been riddled with bullets itself, the radio fizzled and went silent.

Wasting no time, I swiftly curled my arm around my hostage's neck and squeezed his trachea shut beneath my forearm. He struggled for a moment. I applied more pressure, smothering him like a boa constrictor until his entire body had gone limp and he, too, slipped into unconsciousness.

I didn't need to kill anybody. Not yet. I'd resolved that, among other things, a long time ago. Besides, it wasn't as if any of these soldiers, any of these nameless, anonymous, unsuspecting hired guns, were of any real threat to me at the moment. For now, at least, I had the element of surprise on my side.

Or not.

The surveillance camera in the corner lit up red, as if to smile broadly at me, knowingly. I hadn't noticed it up until that moment. Whether or not I'd be rushed by security, however, was a non-issue. Bugs didn't want me dead just yet. He'd already proved that more than once tonight, quite adequately enough.

My finger stamped the 'up' button to the right of the elevator. Whatever the case, I didn't have time to scrutinize it just yet, not as long as he was still out there, still breathing.

"Call up to my office." The hare's last words came floating back to me—_up_ to his office.

I sent the elevator to the topmost floor of the building, to the penthouse. I wasn't absolutely certain I'd find him there, but at this point it was the only lead I had.

The motor whirred to life above my head and my organs lagged behind, a familiar sinking feeling in my stomach, as the elevator shot up at a startling pace. In front of me, an enormous Plexiglas window looked out upon the horizon, upon the crowded city streets drenched with rainwater, the millions of tiny artificial lights dotting the expansive visages of each monstrous skyscraper, minute signs of life in a sprawling, conglomerate shadow. Precipitation streamed in

great torrential sheets down the exterior of the window, blurring the image and stretching it to unreal proportions like a long string of melted taffy.

I lowered my head drearily, sniffing back blood. My eye—at least, the empty socket where it should've been—still hurt.

I reached up to rub it, but never quite got there.

As though hit by a train, the elevator came screeching to a halt, hurling my body violently against the sealed double-doors behind me and sending a shock wave of terror surging through my veins. I dropped my bag, watching helplessly as its contents spilled out across the floor. Above my head, the piercing shriek of metal grinding against metal sent cold chills running down my spine, causing me to clutch my head with both hands in protest.

The lights flickered on and off, and then everything fell silent.

Slowly, I reopened my good eye. Everything was still and dark, accompanied by the soft patter of rain against the window. A few precious shafts of light filtered in through the moisture, refracting eerily against the walls in all manner of indescribable patterns. My hands groped for the wall behind me and flattened firmly upon contact as though it were the only thing holding me in place. My heart winced uneasily. What next?

That's when I noticed the red.

At first, it was just a small translucent blob glazing sporadically over the window in front of me, a light from a nearby passing helicopter, perhaps. But then, just seconds after it had vanished, it reappeared, tracking hesitantly over my abdomen, far too small and erratic to be a headlight. Moments later, a second identical red dot appeared beside it, and a third, and a fourth. Before long, there seemed to be at least a dozen of them, and then two dozen, and then three, all situated carefully over my chest.

My body froze, terrified.

And then there was nothing.

Nothing but light.

* * *

White clouds gave way to blue sky, blue sky to sunshine, and the rich, fulfilling scent of a thousand wildflowers abruptly filled the air. Everything was still, everything was peaceful. Even the birds seemed somewhat contented with the tranquility.

I opened my eyes—both of them—the heat of the sun gently warming my face.

My body lay comfortably atop a small patch of soft, fertile soil, my bill pointed straight up towards the sky, my arms and legs spread slightly apart as though I'd been placed there purposefully. Unsure of what I'd see, I slowly raised one hand off the ground and held it curiously in the air above my head. Four fingers, just like always, covered in inky black feathers; my sleeves, however, were white. Nervously pulling myself into a tremulous sitting position, I silently looked over the rest of my body. Perhaps most glaringly, my clothes had changed color from black to white, and my right eye, the one I'd watched Bugs take out himself not two hours before, had miraculously returned.

I wasn't able to remember exactly what had happened, only standing in that elevator and flinching as crisp, blinding light filled the air all around me. So how did I end up . . . here?

My head turned slowly from right to left, then from left to right, anxiously surveying my surroundings, hoping to pick up a clue as to where I was and to what, exactly, was going on. Luscious flowers surrounded me on all sides, like a river of watercolors, spanning out for several expansive acres in all directions. Squared off by a perfect rectangle of majestic oak trees, the quiet, multihued field of sunflowers and lilacs seemed somewhat surreal, somewhat out-of-place, like an oasis in the desert. I even felt that perhaps I may've been the first inquisitive creature to have ever set foot in such a place.

The sound of rustling grass, however, quickly forced me to rethink my conclusion. My head jerked suddenly to the left, my eyes wild and shot with blood. A familiar face, one I most certainly hadn't anticipated running into ever again, appeared before me.

I cringed.

There, standing not ten feet away, partially submerged in flowers, stood Sylvester, the crass, black-and-white tuxedo cat who'd taken a bullet to the head during the first leg of my adventure: retaliation for his definite, albeit minimal, involvement in Bugs' scheme.

My limbs froze.

Sylvester was dead; that I knew well enough to be certain of. Yet there he stood, in spite of it all, ears lifted, attentive, draped in white just as I was, definitely alive—or, at least, _living._

He pursed his lips. "Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as always, eh, Daffy?"

I didn't respond, or even attempt to acknowledge his awesomely vague observation.

He furrowed his brow. "Don't you recognize me?"

My eyes widened, a sudden groundswell of fear rising in my throat.

"I . . . " My voice broke off uselessly. Regardless of the undeniable lucidity of the image before me, my mind refused to accept it.

Sylvester . . . was dead. There were no two ways about it, and I was unable to reach back far enough to form the words necessary to inquire as to how, and in what capacity, he had managed to survive.

"I know," he droned on tiredly, unconcerned, as though patiently mulling over my thoughts, "some things aren't so easy to explain."

He offered me his hand, beckoning me to take it, a cool astuteness simmering between his eyes.

Having, apparently, no alternative, I carefully shifted my weight over my knees, loosely took hold of his palm, and rose, somewhat unsteadily, onto my bare feet. Once I'd straightened to full height and we again stood eye-to-eye, he took a solemn step forward, leisurely closing the gap between us, surveying every inch of me with careful precision, as though I were some estranged cousin he hadn't seen in ages. After a long, spiritless moment of heart-wrenching silence, he at last smiled politely and observed with a kind lateral-lisp:

"I'm a lot taller than you, aren't I?"

He raised one hand to his forehead and stuck it out in an unceremonious salute, measuring my height in comparison to his own. His hand stopped short about three inches above the last tuft of feathers on the top of my head and he grinned with an odd sort of satisfaction.

Shaken, confused, and thoroughly uncertain how to respond, I tensely smiled back.

"Funny," he went on coldly, his voice dropping to a distinctively lower tone, "I was under the impression that we had at least some semblance of an agreement."

My thoughts were cluttered, unorganized; somehow I couldn't seem to make sense of them.

"An—an agreement?" I repeated dumbly. "What kind of agreement?"

Fiendishly, he pulled back his lips in a peculiar half-frown. "Why, only the most important kind," he answered grimly.

My eyelids fluttered with quiet bemusement. I shuffled my feet. This was a dream, I told myself, nothing more—just a silly, harmless dream.

Sylvester's fist struck my abdomen like a jackhammer pounding through concrete. My knees buckled instantaneously. I choked on phlegm, gasping for breath as he reared back and drove his knee directly into my chest. Clutching my ribcage in agony, silently assuming that something must've broken, I fell to the ground wheezing sharply, the flowers repelling me, forcing me away, assuring that I remained within range of at least one, if not all, of his limbs at any given moment.

Luckily, for the time being, it seemed he was finished.

"Did you really think I'd just forget, Daffy?" he inquired liltingly, as though it were the most common question in the world. "Did you really think I'd just let it go, just like that?"

Still clutching my chest, breathing raggedly, I slid laboriously to my knees. "Let . . . _what_ go?"

Sneering, he bared his teeth and snarled: "Don't play daffy with me, duck! You know exactly what I'm talking about!"

I shook my head, protesting sloppily. "No—no, I don't even—I don't even know what's—what's going on—"

"Shut up!" he barked, leaning precariously over my shoulder. "You reneged on your promise. You let Bugs get the best of you. You didn't adapt to the circumstances, didn't roll with the punches; you took 'em like aspirin, let him corner you like a fucking amateur!"

"Promise? What promise? I—I didn't make any promises—"

My ignorance alone appeared to ignite him more than anything.

"Of course you did!" he exploded. "Maybe not in so many words, maybe not out loud, but that doesn't change the fact that you _did_ make it!" His tone was rough and accusatory, yet his eyes remained placid and unreadable. "The second that bullet found its way to my brain, I could hear everything, even the words you _didn't_ speak. You swore to me you'd kill him. You swore to me! You made that promise, whether you intended to or not, to me and to everyone else whose lives you've ruined in the process!"

My breathing grew rapid and uneven. My chest tightened around my lungs. Great beads of sweat began rolling in shiny streaks down the front of my forehead. My stomach stirred apprehensively.

"What—what do you mean?" I stammered weakly, holding my head, truthfully fearful of the answer.

"Guess you just weren't built for the big leagues, brother," he replied unfortunately. "Such a promising start, too, but at the end of the big game, who really gives a fuck about the loser?"

The loser? The _loser?_

My body shrunk like a turtle slowly receding into its shell. I fell desperately onto all-fours. The glass, the rain, the blood, the pain—everything suddenly began to play in reverse. I could see it all looping over and over again like a broken phonograph inside my head:

Standing tremulously in the elevator, great laser beams of red all around me, suddenly . . .

The window shattered like a set of fine China as thirty-six forty-five millimeter bullets, each like a separate, unstoppable Mack truck, burst through the enormous pane of glass, forcing me powerlessly into the wall. Every last one of them hit their mark. Every last one of them broke the skin.

And just like that, all was quiet. Nothing else moved.

My brain took a moment to fully comprehend everything that had transpired. Unfortunately, a moment was all the time it had.

Long bloody streaks stained the cold metal doors behind me as my body crumpled like a clay pigeon in a thunderstorm. My legs gave way. My beak lolled open. My stomach churned. My lungs collapsed. My heart . . .

. . . stopped.

"And now you're here," Sylvester went on obliviously, pulling me screeching back to whatever reality I had slipped into. "Although, I must admit, I'm still not exactly certain just where _'here'_ is, even after all this time."

Painstakingly, I raised my head, my mind still racing, barely able to wrap itself my own scattered memories, let alone his words.

"Sometimes I like to think of it as a Heaven for those of us who never prayed, a Heaven for those of us whose lives ended ahead of schedule, a Heaven for those of us who've still got a chip on our shoulders, a loose end to tie up, some unfinished business . . .

"Purgatory."

As he spoke, he appeared to be glaring at me with a distinct air of resentment, as though he were truly disgusted by my presence, truly repulsed by my inability to satisfy his hopes. I turned away, still desperately seeking a more poignant explanation.

With little hesitation, he quietly offered a suggestion of his own.

"Don't fight it, Daffy," he murmured flatly, without expression. "Face it."

The tips of my bill parted just enough to form the words I dreaded to think. They slid out with raspy ambiguity, with the kind of coldness that could only exist in one's deepest, darkest admittances.

"I'm dead."

Dead. The word alone stunk like rotten eggs, wafting insidiously past my nostrils, burning my eyes, drawing forth an acerbic, uninvited well of sticky, crystalline tears, hollowing out the innards of my brain cells, planting, producing, replanting, reproducing all over again, an unstoppable cancer spreading easily from feather to feather, damning me more and more permanently with each passing second.

Yet as quickly as I'd observed it, as quickly as I'd glimpsed truth in the most repugnant of lies, I turned away from it, I denied it.

I couldn't be dead, I scolded myself with utter incredulity. I couldn't be. It wasn't possible—not that quickly, not that easily. Not after everything I'd been through. Or was that simply the way it worked nowadays? Was this all a coincidence, or was it, rather, the universe pulling out all the stops again? It wasn't as if I truly _deserved_ to live—that, among other things, I'd come to terms with some time ago—but it seemed resoundingly inappropriate that Bugs should skate off once more with a fresh Coke and another free pass.

_Why,_ for the love of God, I asked myself for the billionth time, did the whole world favor him so disproportionately? _Why,_ after all my sorrow and grief and physical torture, had I again been denied my hard-earned retribution?

I only hoped my newfound "friend" would have the answers.

"I suppose," Sylvester continued drearily, "if anybody deserves to spend an eternity isolated in a cold, lonesome place like this, it's the two of us." He almost chuckled. "But that certainly doesn't mean that we should _have_ to."

As he said this, there emerged a slight chill in the air, as though his demeanor were gradually affecting the temperature of the entire clearing.

"I don't belong here, Daffy," he remarked heatedly, with an edge, a definite tinge of desperation in his voice. "This isn't where I want to be. This isn't where I'm _supposed_ to be. But now that you're here with me," he stumbled, quickly correcting himself, "now that you're as dead as I am," (he seemed to enjoy the prospect,) "I can't make it to where I need to go. Does that make sense to you?"

Unresponsive, I sat with my legs bent sharply at the knees, curling awkwardly around either side of my body, my back bent passively, my hands fidgeting absentmindedly in my lap.

He tried again, rephrasing the question, a little louder this time. "Do you understand . . . what I'm trying to say to you?"

Finally, after a long, emboldened silence which seemed to drag on for centuries, I tenderly shook my head, gazing unblinkingly at the fertile soil beneath his uncovered paws.

"No," I mumbled softly, somehow very distinct, slightly forbearing. "I don't know what you're talking about."

My eyes roamed steadily upwards, past his knees, his waist, his stomach, his chest, finally coming to rest disbelievingly within the cold, icy space between his nose and stately forehead, fearlessly tracking his malevolent gaze. My breath came heavier, its intensity multiplying tenfold.

His head cocked slowly to one side like a curious dog perplexed by some unusual sound in the corner. Patiently, he cleared his throat.

"I suppose I should explain then," he continued softly, glancing away from me.

Stubbornly, I shook my head. "I don't believe it."

His lips sunk into an obstinate frown. "Don't believe what?" The bitterness of his tone deeply irritated me, slowly degrading my already-disestablished train of thought.

"What don't you believe?" he repeated scornfully. "What _isn't_ there to believe?"

This time, I didn't answer. My face, stingy and angular, silently related the entire story.

"You're delusional," Sylvester remarked grievously, widening his eyes. "If you're thinking what I think you're thinking . . . "

My heart felt as though it had mysteriously resurged into my throat and all of my words seemed to tumble out sloppily and disjointedly.

"How do you know?" I sputtered. "H—how can you be so sure that I'm—that I'm . . . " My voice crumbled and faded. I couldn't finish. I couldn't repeat that sick, uninvited word.

Sylvester shrugged his shoulders. "You're here, aren't you?" he observed disconcertingly.

Embracing my knees, I quickly shut my eyes and began tensely rocking back and forth to the rhythm of my own heartbeat. Bracing myself, I bit down harshly on my defenseless tongue, hopeful, perhaps, that I might somehow force myself awake again; hopeful, perhaps, that this was all little more than a harmless yet badly misconstrued nightmare.

"Stop," I mumbled weakly.

"You wake up in a meadow of beautiful wildflowers," he went on conspicuously, his voice swiftly elevating to a brief, condescending level of unusually educated diction, "with entirely no knowledge of how or why or who put you there in the first place. For a moment or two, you're a little worried, maybe even a little scared, but everything smells so nice, everything looks so pure and pristine that eventually it doesn't bother you anymore, and you sit up, look yourself over, suddenly realize you're wearing completely different clothes than you were before . . . and somehow they fit _just right."_

"Stop," again, I protested, swallowing hard. He paid me no mind.

"Then, for a split second," a wicked grin stole across his sunken, pessimistic features, "you wonder if you're the first intelligent creature who's ever set foot in a place like this."

"Stop!" I snarled rigorously, raising my voice an entire octave. Again, he ignored me.

"But you're not the first; you're just new meat, taking the place of some old fool who's finally got the credentials to move on—somebody's cleaned up his mess, put in a good word for him upstairs. But in your case, who knows? You might never graduate! You might be stuck here for the rest of eternity with nothing but the clothes on your back, and all these fucking weeds whispering to you in your sleep!"

"_Stop it!"_ I bellowed, squeezing my eyes shut tightly, clutching my head violently in both hands. This time he heard me.

"Stop it? Stop it?" he laughed. "That's real funny coming from you, buster—_real funny._" He was pacing back and forth now, wringing his hands inattentively, sniggering spryly between muted breaths. "Daffy Duck, bullheaded, bigmouthed master of excess, asking—no, _commanding—_me to stop it! Sufferin' succotash, that's a real hoot!"

My spine tingled with abhorrence. All my frustrations, all my pent-up, vaguely physical sentiments begrudgingly spawned from seventy years' bad luck, burst forth and boiled over like an pot of uranium at that exact moment.

Without warning, as he stood there giggling boyishly, my body reared forward like an aggravated bull and drove head-on into his unprotected chest, sending us both sprawling wildly to the ground in a chaotic, pollen-laced heap of failed existence. He never stopped laughing. Even as I rammed fist after fist into his strangely unguarded face, seemingly bashing his head into a thick, pulpy soup, spread with long spongy strings of grayish brain matter and tiny chunks of bone, he never stopped laughing.

In actuality, I hadn't hurt him at all. It was as if I'd never touched him, as if I'd simply been raining harmless blows upon an expectant rubber dummy whose face always bounced back to normal, unaffected. I took hold of his throat, squeezing hatefully with both hands, just trying to shut him up, just trying to stop him from laughing. Nothing worked. He kept on cackling stupidly to his own assumptive conjectures, like a child play-fighting with his friend in the park.

"And he tells _me_ to stop it!" he gaffed haltingly between chuckles, forcibly pushing me away.

He pressed his hands against the side of my face, awkwardly bending my head back as I struggled to maintain a solid grip on his wriggling throat. He was stronger than me, much stronger, even in death.

Still in stitches, he quickly freed himself from my grasp and shoved my body clumsily to one side, pounding the dirt with both fists in an unusually animated fit of hilarity. My momentum sent me spiraling into a barrel roll, kicking up dust and dirt like a tire stuck in the mud. Undeterred, I immediately counteracted my weight and gathered myself for another attack. This time, however, as I dove heedlessly into his awaiting limbs, I found myself slung directly onto my back with an earsplitting thud, instantly ripping the breath from my lungs.

The two-tone feline's incessant giggles were finally beginning to subside as he exhaustedly pulled himself onto all-fours. Still shaking, he lazily wiped at the cold stream of ironic tears pouring from his crimson-tinged eyes and choked out a few last-minute chortles, slowly regaining his composure.

Still out of breath, I frantically craned my neck to face him and flipped myself over like a frenetic, duck-shaped pancake, reaching out with one bony, four-fingered hand to grab hold of his momentarily unguarded thigh, my eyes feral, inhuman, hungry for blood. With all my might, I ripped his knees out from under him and watched gleefully as he collapsed face-down in the dirt, his unwarranted laughter quickly cut off altogether this time. My satisfaction went short-lived, however, for seconds later, he reared back recklessly with his other leg, kicking wildly at my face from point blank range. I could feel my bill loosening around the edges as he freed himself from my grasp, forcing me back, his bare paws knocking me senseless.

As though frightened, he quickly scrambled away from me, standing shakily to his feet.

Meanwhile, on the ground, I could do little but roll over pathetically, holding my head and squinting out the light, my ears ringing.

"I told you not to fight it!" His tone was unclear, an awkward cross between anger and dismay. "You've got to keep yourself together! You've got to stay calm, you've got to _accept_ it!"

Through my fingers, I watched his face gradually contort into a look of desperation, all humor shedding from his widened eyes. The lines of his cheeks and eyebrows rose simultaneously as though someone had pulled on them with invisible wire. He approached me with a much softer, sympathetic gait.

"If I was too forward earlier, if I gave you the wrong impression, then I apologize." For once, his tone was sincere. "The truth is, I need your help."

My help? Had he lost his mind?

"Like I said before," he explained, "I'm not supposed to be here. I died for a reason, Daffy. I died so that you could get to Bugs, so that you could kill him—and until that shakes out, I can't leave this place, I can't move on. With every life you ended I could feel myself getting closer, getting stronger, but without the big one, without the one that really matters, I'm stuck here, and I'll never get any further."

My hands fell to my sides in surrender. He was telling the truth. I could hear it in his voice.

My beak edged open, my eyes tense and confused. "I can't help you," I said.

He shook his head. "Yes you can." His face abandoned the appearance of desperation, replacing it with a hollow look of twisted gratification, like an addict satisfying a long overdue craving. "You want him dead just as much as I do," he went on. "You want him to pay for what he did to you—so do I."

"But I'm here." I still laid on my back, my gaze pointed blankly towards the sky.

"I can fix that," he assured me, an inflection of pride in his speech.

My head rose slightly so as to acknowledge my curiosity, yet the rest of my body remained motionless.

"I can give you anything you want," he reiterated, "anything you need to make sure the job gets done."

My strength gradually returning, a fleeting sensation of hope suddenly overwhelming my better judgment, I forced myself to my knees, then to my feet.

"You know there's only one thing I want." My resolve had strengthened. My words no longer attempted to humor him.

He nodded, a calculating glimmer in his yellow-tinged eyes. "Same here." He lowered his voice to a shallow, undercutting whisper, as if to avoid being overheard by any eavesdroppers: _"Assurance."_

My eyes remained fastened to him, unwavering and judgmental.

"I need _assurance,"_ he repeated, "assurance that I won't regret it after it's done, assurance that you won't go back on what you swear to me. I need your word. Give me your word."

With a certain spitefulness, I shook my head. "You don't deserve it."

The shadows below his cheek bones hardened and his face became difficult to read once more. He did not appear to be angered by my defiance; rather, he seemed almost relieved by it, as if my refusal to play along with his egoistic game was, in effect, all the assurance he really needed.

Suddenly, his gaze dropped from my line of sight.

"Then I guess you're on your own," he said.

* * *

For once in his lifetime, Bugs Bunny was uncertain. As a single towering, armor-clad sentinel led him down a long, narrow corridor he recalled having traversed hundreds of times during his tenure at ACME, he began to grow fearful of his inevitable response to what he knew awaited him in the infirmary. Upon witnessing it, would he become regretful, jaded, thoughtful, meditative, grateful, elated? The answer, like so few others, stubbornly eluded him.

"How much further?" It was a pointless question. He knew exactly how far they were from their destination. The building was his, the blueprints ingrained in his memory.

"Just a little," replied the man in front of him. His voice was terse and overcome with boredom.

The majority of his hirees, Bugs noted, seemed greatly apathetic to his concerns. They regarded his demands with a blasé attitude and at times sounded downright mutinous. If it weren't for all the money he had pledged to their organization, he was quite certain that most of the hired guns currently at his disposal would have never gotten involved with him in the first place.

As they walked on, the hallway swooped around a corner and down a small flight of stairs before swelling into a wide-open, dimly-lit lobby. Following his escort through a barely-visible set of plate glass doors and past an abandoned secretarial desk, Bugs tensely straightened his tie as if to provide himself with solace, wholly ineffective preparation for the circumstances which laid ahead of him.

There was another door, a smaller one, at the back of the lobby, tucked away beneath a layer of shadows as though shamed by its mere existence. The man calmly pushed open the door and gestured for him to enter, which the rabbit did quickly, with as much dignity as he could put on.

The room was dark, even more so than the rest of the extinguished, quieted building. A number of sterile surgical utensils perched atop steely, uninviting metal trays shimmered in the corner like bats' eyes in a blackened cave. Various bulky, nondescript machines plastered with red, boldface warnings protruded awkwardly from the walls as if to keep each side of the room as asymmetric as possible. In the center of the room stood a chilly examining table which appeared, at first glance, to share more in common with an autopsy slab than anything decent. Above the table shone a piercing white spotlight, obscured by the silhouette of the tall fox who stood before it.

Bugs' bodyguard followed closely behind him, silently easing the door shut once he had entered the room, closing off the outside world. Stillness permeated the atmosphere. The fox slowly turned, removing his gloves as he did so. Behind him, Bugs could nearly make out the image of a motionless leg lying flat across the slab, a puddle of sparkling, rose-colored blood gathering beneath it.

"Is it him?" he inquired edgily, his face blank, his tone raspy and breathless. It was another pointless question, yet one he felt obligated to ask.

The fox did not respond immediately; rather, he remained silent for a moment and calmly stepped to the side, allowing Bugs a clearer view of the twisted, brutal image he had envisioned so many times before in his nightmares.

It _was_ me—and indeed, I was dead.

My chest had all but caved in. More heavy caliber bullets than one could count on fingers and toes had torn through my blood-drenched clothes, my feathers, my skin, liquefying my insides like a swarm of parasites starved for a host. My left eye had fallen closed; the one he'd taken from me remained shrouded from view. My beak was shut.

At long last, I was silent. At long last, I had failed. At long last, my body had refused to persist in the face of it. For once, there was no gleeful, selfish expression chiseled into the subtle lines of my face, only an abnormal emptiness which seemed to resonate beyond the vacant shell my body had become. The sensation expanded throughout the room like a large plume of smoke, echoing outwards, filling the void my existence had created.

Bugs, his heart tensing, his mind racing, uncertain of what to think, uncertain of what to feel, took an unnaturally hesitant step closer. His eyes were unable to look away.

He reached for my hand. He touched it. He lifted it. He felt it: the deadness, the futility, the frustration, the anguish, the fear, the jealousy, the betrayal, everything he had put me through, everything the world had put me through. Solemnly, he interlocked his fingers with mine and placed his other palm on the back of my hand, raising it to his forehead as if to descend into prayer.

As quickly as it had been snatched away, the truth became clear to him. He derived pleasure from my suffering. It brought him satisfaction to see me falter, to see me struggle, to watch as I broke down and lost control. He loved it. It made him whole. It was an unhealthy psychological abstraction, a disreputable, uncontrollable aberration, one he felt guilty to harbor but never guilty enough to avoid gratifying.

Now it had gone too far.

Life was not a game, it was a secret, an enigma so quiet and unassuming that one could not truly comprehend its significance until it had been completely snuffed out and extinguished. It had been easy for Bugs to induce my suffering, yet it was torturous for him to witness the outcome. The chase, he professed, had seemed so much sweeter than the reward.

His face stoic and objective, he silently released my hand, allowing it to flop limply onto the table beside me. "How did it happen?" he whispered.

"You shouldn't concern yourself with the details, sir," replied the fox, named Marbury. "The less you know, the less you'll need to lie in your deposition."

Bugs did not look up. His eyes were focused and immovable. Images of the two of us together continued to flash cruelly through his head. And then he thought about the moment of his treachery, the moment he had taken aim at my forehead and sentenced me to death without so much as a callous explanation. He remembered the look on my face, the brief glimmer of terror in my eyes, the dark, hateful, betrayed expression he had had the curse of witnessing, the curse of feeling, the curse of knowing.

"Are you sure he's dead?" he asked.

A bemused, slightly irritated chuckle prefaced Marbury's answer. "Sir, he's got two-dozen bullets lodged in his chest, major lung damage; he's probably lost more than half the blood in his body; his heart stopped beating nearly thirty minutes ago."

"_Are you sure he's dead?" _Bugs repeated threateningly.

Marbury grimaced distastefully, wringing his hands. "I've never been so sure of anything in my life," he insisted, stunned that Bugs had even felt the question worth asking. Did he not have eyes?

The rabbit allowed his head to hang. "We're done," he muttered.

"Not quite." Persistence was key. "There's going to be an investigation; we need to make sure we have an agreement in order—"

"Not right now," Bugs interjected coldly. "I'll negotiate with your sponsor when I've got time. Not right now."

"I'm sorry," Marbury continued resolutely, "but he was insistent that we get things rolling right away. The FBI was already on this duck's trail when we caught up with him; who knows how long it'll take for them to track him down?"

"Track him down . . . track him down . . . " Bugs slammed his fist on the table. "They _can't_ track him down, he's dead!"

The rabbit gave a toothy grin and snickered oddly to himself, yet he did not appear cheerful. On the contrary, his expression became one of detachment, of distance, even a loss of control.

"It doesn't suit him well." With those words, his laughter immediately subsided, replaced by a tight, close-knit introspectiveness.

Marbury anxiously shuffled his feet, an alarmed, slightly disturbed gape draped across his angular features. He remained silent, feigning the same chilly, respectful stillness that had previously stifled the hare, hoping to soften his approach.

"Look," he persisted, "we've done everything you've asked us to do. All I need is a few minutes of your time so we can put together . . . an insurance policy."

A spiteful, obstinate frown came over Bugs' face. "Okay, doc," he conceded reluctantly, "if you want me to call him, I'll call him." His ears flattened against his head. "Just gimme a minute to—to . . . " he sighed, "just gimme a minute."

Biting his tongue and allowing his head to tilt rather conspicuously to one side, Marbury offered a brief, understanding nod and turned away. "We'll be right outside," he whispered, signaling to his partner to leave the room. His steel-soled boots scuffed loudly against the floor as he passed through the doorframe and slowly pulled it shut, eyeing the towering rabbit suspiciously until he had completely disappeared from sight.

With the door closed, Bugs felt his knees buckling shakily underneath him. He quickly braced himself against the table where I lay and leaned forward, his breath coming in short, uneasy gasps, his chest heaving up and down, his eyes glazing sporadically over my cold, inanimate features. He felt as though he might vomit at any moment.

"It wasn't supposed to end like this," he remarked softly, with a definite tinge of urgency. "This isn't right. This isn't the way I wanted it at all."

My face remained still, unresponsive, lifeless.

"If I could change it, I would," he went on, now as though he were somehow pleading with me. "If I could go back, I swear to God I'd end it right, I'd do what was best for both of us." He placed one hand gently on top of my chest and held it there for several moments, his eyes condensing to slivers, nearly welling up with tears. "I'd end it on _our_ terms."

Seconds later, he lifted his hand and sheepishly glanced down at his open palm, knowing that it had been covered with blood before he even laid eyes upon it.

"I'm sorry," he choked, suddenly lifting my sunken shoulders off the slab and drawing me into a close, almost brotherly embrace. "I'm so sorry."

For a long time after that, Bugs Bunny remained absolutely silent, his arms wrapped tightly around my ribs, his head resting solemnly against my shoulder, his heart and respiratory rate finally beginning to slow—and then something changed very dramatically.

He felt warm.

The sensation spread across his chest like blood in water, expanding outwards, gradually flooding towards his shoulders, embracing him as he embraced me. His eyes slid open like narrow window blinds, his upper lip quivered with trepidation.

A subtle throbbing accompanied the heat, like a distant drumbeat, slightly out of rhythm, slightly slower and shallower than the metronomic pulse of his heart. He could feel it, rising in strength against his chest, pounding through him like an echoing bass drum.

The blood froze in his veins.

His eyes, sallow and overwrought, widened.

He turned his head towards mine, a look of deepest apprehension mounting across his lined face, silently overcoming him.

The corners of our eyes met.

The world spun slower.

All superfluous memories quickly faded into the inky blackness surrounding us. The moment itself was emblematic enough of our hateful, violent, sadistic relationship. No emotions, no senseless explanations were required.

I could feel the blood rushing to the furthest corners of my body, dispersing adrenaline evenly throughout, gingerly reawakening my muscles, coaxing them from their fleeting instance of hibernation. I stretched my fingers, spreading them apart, the feeling like testing an old leather glove that hadn't been worn in years.

My chest remained riddled with bullets; my heart and lungs ignored them, powered by elements more potent than life itself. All the pain had finally been sapped away. Now, there was nothing left to distract me, nothing left but my objective.

Bugs never saw it coming. My hand went to his throat with the brute force of a charging rhinoceros, immediately causing his eyes to glaze, widening around the edges. When I threw him into the wall, a look of stunned amusement suddenly came over his face. It was as if it provided him with the utmost pleasure to feel me so close to him again, even if the tables had been drastically turned.

I dug my forearm into the space above his Adam's apple, lifting him off his feet like a helpless marionette, nearly snapping his neck like a twig. My bill came within inches of his nose. My single eye convened on his two, engaging them like a vengeful kamikaze.

"_I came back for you."_ My voice was as gravelly and hate-filled as I had ever heard it. It was the severest, sincerest whisper ever uttered by a living creature, if I could still be considered as one.

Bugs was unable to reply, his face streaked with morbid shades of purple as he struggled to free himself. The strength with which I had pinned him to the wall appeared to have stunned him beyond retaliation. He wasn't thinking clearly. For all his suppositions, he hadn't been prepared to defend himself against the grizzly onslaught of a dead duck.

The sharp toe of a polished dress shoe rammed squarely into my shin, momentarily turning the tide, putting me on the defensive. _Don't let him get away!_ The words flashed repeatedly through my head as I silently wrenched the helpless rabbit to the floor, continuing to choke him all the way to the ground. I could feel the bones in his neck snapping beneath the force of my elbow, crackling as his knuckles might when jerked back and forth. I centered all my weight over his chest, crushing his lungs as he wheezed futilely for breath. His hands released their grip on my

forearm where his fingers had dug desperately into my skin and began to claw violently at the tiled floor, reaching for something, anything, to defend himself with. For once, luck did not appear to be on his side.

Relying on sheer spontaneity, he placed both palms flat against the floor and pushed off the ground, drawing himself to his knees. Catching me staggering backwards, off-balance, he quickly set one foot forward and propelled himself backward, knocking both of us wildly into the wall behind us, upturning a small, shimmering tray of surgical instruments in the process.

The tiny silver tools clattered shrilly to the white tile floor below, violently breaking the silence, sending both hired guards bursting excitedly through the door, guns drawn, eyes cutting sharply from Bugs to me and back again.

The rabbit spun away from my vengeful arms, clutching his reddening throat with one hand and his hollow, sunken chest with the other. I nearly charged him again, but the loaded gun in Marbury's grasp forced me, begrudgingly, to reconsider.

"_Jesus Christ!"_ the fox cried in awe upon shifting his sights in my direction. His voice embodied a low undercurrent of disappointment; his diagnosis, obvious as it may have been at the time, had, in fact, been wrong.

"Don't shoot him!" Bugs choked breathlessly, still panting heavily, sweat moistening the fur on his brow.

"Sir, I—I—" Marbury stammered profusely, barely able to keep his trembling trigger finger from unloading the entire clip. "He was—he was—there's no fucking way he—"

"Shut up!" Bugs demanded, staring at me with an expression of greatest profundity, refusing to take his eyes off of me. With the manic fox reluctantly silenced, a certain degree of calm settled throughout the room.

"Daffy . . . Daffy . . . " Bugs repeated brightly, his voice a strange mixture of prayer and admiration. "I—I knew you couldn't have died on me the way they said you did. It wasn't right."

My eyebrows remained narrow, restrained aggression causing my beak to quiver furiously, chattering as if caught in the cold. Nothing he said to me, no matter how twisted, no matter how heartfelt, could further postpone the inevitable. Sylvester had already convinced me otherwise. Death was guaranteed; compromise was not an option. All inhibitions had finally been lifted.

"Daffy," he seemed to enjoy the way my name rolled off his tongue, "I want to tell you something important. I want to make sure you understand me."

"I already understand you." My voice was strained, hushed, lowered, yet I could barely contain myself from erupting.

Bugs shook his head. "This is groundbreaking. This is brand new territory." He glanced sideways at his mercenaries, both of them still dumbstruck from the sight of me; funny, no one ever seemed so shocked when I emerged unscathed from those masochistic cartoons. It was a simple matter, I professed. There was something about that gilded screen, the perfection of it, something that made it all seem kosher, the brutality less palpable, less horrific, acceptable.

"What I said to you earlier," the rabbit murmured painfully, "none of it was true. I lied to you. I didn't mean to, but I did. It seemed like the truth at the time.

"The real truth is . . . I don't hate you; I _need_ you. Without you, I'm nothing, I'm a pawn, I'm a loose cannon. I need someone like you to carry the load for me, to shovel all the shit in this miserable fucking world. You can understand that, can't you?"

"I told you, Bugs. I already understand."

"What?"

"You _are_ a pawn. Better yet, you're a dog, a filthy, ungrateful animal. Your entire life, you've had everything you ever wanted placed right at your feet, just given to you out of the grace of God. No struggle was ever too much for you; you never lacked any self-confidence; you never felt the ache of defeat, the hopelessness, the helplessness, the defenselessness; everything good in the universe fell right into your lap, so easily, so naturally, like it was the way of things. And yet you still have the nerve to stand here in front of me tonight complaining that it isn't enough, that somehow you need more, that you need my suffering to entertain you, to make you feel right again? You've already taken my life away from me; I won't let you take my dignity, too."

At least, that's what I wish I had said.

In reality, I said nothing. I allowed every stone to remain unturned, every issue forgotten, every emotion unrealized. And while I stared at him coldly, his reaction insisted that he had expected more, perhaps rightfully so.

"If I'm honest," he continued softly, after a beat, "I don't want to be the one to kill you. I don't want to be the one to stop you from living your life, to take that right away from you. At one time I thought I did; obviously, I was wrong."

The tone of his voice suggested that he knew there would be no turning back from the point we had reached, and that there could be no compromise on either side.

"I don't want to be the one to end this," he reiterated, "but I'm certainly not going to lay down and die for you, either. I still have a few rights of my own." He glanced at the guards by the door, then back at me. "You should have fun with these two. Just remember, Daffy, I've already beaten you once. You might have all the persistence in the world rooted in that body of yours, but if you force my hand, make no mistake, I _will_ beat you again."

Nothing more to say, he turned and briskly stalked out of the room, shoving past the motionless, statuesque guards, sliding the door shut quietly behind him. His footsteps echoed in the hallway outside, spaced in a constant rhythm, gradually receding into oblivion. I moved towards them, refusing to lose the trail.

"_Don't move!"_ the fearful, defeated Marbury exclaimed, hastily cocking his weapon. The man beside him followed suit, eyes like a pair of laser sights, tremulous.

For a moment, I hesitated, my better intuition persuading me to halt in my tracks.

Marbury swallowed heavily, gathering himself. "Turn around, put your hands on the wall."

My animal instincts, my vengeful, implacable impulses, urged me to reconsider.

"Do it!" the fox's sharp, piercing bark appeared to shock and intimidate even him.

I lowered my head. The unspeakable thought of losing Bugs without ever pursuing the chance to settle the score continued to whirl around inside my mind, gaining momentum, clouding all reason and logic like a swirling sandstorm. The feeling was not much unlike terror.

Marbury straightened his arms violently, shaking the pistol in his grasp, as if to remind me that it still existed. "I'm not gonna say it again!" His voice was beginning to waver, steadily eroding, melting, deteriorating.

"What are you going to do?" I murmured. "Shoot me?"

The very idea was vaguely humorous to me. I could not possibly be damaged, beaten, bruised, or battered anymore than I already had been. Even death was not enough to slow me, much less to defeat me. What more could a simple bullet do to cause me harm?

Marbury's eyes widened gapingly. The gun trembled in his hands.

"Just let me go." There was something unusually persuasive in the frailty of my voice, coupled with the tenseness in my shoulders. "I could use the break."

The fox continued to hesitate; he was not convinced, clearly still pining for a paycheck endorsed by Bugs' signature. "What if you don't make it? What if I let you go and he kills you?" he wondered aloud.

"If," I responded tersely, with more confidence than I could ever recall commanding.

Marbury's gaze remained locked unblinkingly on my stern, uncompromising features for a few seconds more. He then turned to glance at his partner, resoundingly clueless as to his next course of action, desperately in need of a second opinion. His companion, however, had already lowered his weapon.

"Just let me go," I repeated with the softness of a poltergeist.

His eyes sliced back in my direction. His grip loosened on the pistol. His arms fell heavily to his sides, cautiously relieved. I took a step closer to him.

"Now, if you don't mind," I remarked slyly, "I could use that gun."

In the blink of an eye, I found myself in the hallway, armed, voraciously retracing Bugs Bunny's steps, hunting him, sniffing him out like a baited bloodhound. The darkness surrounding me burned with an austere violet glow, beckoning me, pulling me onward, guiding me towards my sole ambition. Every step was a graceful stride; despite my injuries, every breath was deep and full; I remained powered by invincibility.

The hallway expanded, widening into a large, rectangular office space, unlit, packed with vacant cubicles, dead computers, lonely swivel chairs. My right side was all but defenseless, blinded, easily ambushed. I crept between the rows of cubicles, handgun outstretched, left eye dutifully scanning the shadows for any aberration. At the opposite end of the room was a large glass pane which separated the front offices from the CEO's. A streak of blood from Bugs' slashed palm accented the door handle. I reached for it with a steady, skeletal hand.

Shards of glass rained down over my shoulders as a muffled crack rang out and a nickel-sized bullet shrieked past my head, nearly grazing my bill. I spun around, dropping to one knee, pointing my gun furiously into the blackness, lone eye searching for the silhouette of my enemy. The rabbit, however, had already ducked for cover inside a cubicle.

"Alright, Daff," he proclaimed semi-facetiously, "I apologize! I admit, that was a cowardly move!"

I refused to allow my emotions to get the better of me, again remaining chillingly silent.

"Let's not be kids about this! We're not boys anymore, doc, we're men! We should settle our differences like adults, am I right?"

He extended his arm out into the open, brandishing a silenced pistol, flailing it around to assure me that he was disarming himself. The gun dropped to the floor with a hollow thud. He took a slow, ginger, pensive step from his alcove, arms raised high above his head, attempting to flaunt a certain undeserved innocence.

As his face came into view, emerging into the ghostly light, I immediately straightened my shoulders, raising my own weapon, ejecting a warning shot which nearly sheared off his enormous ears.

"_Christ!"_ he snarled breathlessly, darting for shelter. "You trying to give me a fucking heart attack? Don't I get a chance to defend myself?"

The pathetic son of a bitch didn't know when to shut his mouth. Thankfully, I did.

To justify such a ridiculous request with a slew of crass, indignant remarks would have been downright foolish of me. He was completely oblivious to his own hypocrisy, and I had no intention of forcing any long overdue epiphanies down his throat at this point. The time for self-discovery had come and gone. He could go to the grave believing whatever he wanted to believe; it meant nothing to me, as long as he had, indeed, _gone to the grave._

"Let's try this again," Bugs suggested softly, once he had regained his composure. Again, he tiptoed into the light, this time at a slightly hastened pace, as though he expected it to earn him more favorable results. It did.

My finger, tremulous and irresolute, hesitated to pull the trigger. One bullet was not enough, I told myself. One bullet alone was not sufficient repayment for everything he had done to me. There was so much anger, frustration, hatred, and pain that I still wished to unleash upon him, to satisfy and unfetter myself of, that I could never contentedly reap my vengeance in such an anticlimactic fashion . . .

. . . even if the anticlimax was what I had become accustomed to.

Whether willfully or not, the gun slipped out of my hand—and Bugs charged.

The two of us collided, barreling into the unbroken pane of glass, bending it under the force of our combined weight. He hurled his fists at me, his jagged knuckles shredding the side of my face, causing tiny white stars to surround me in the blackness. It didn't hurt; _nothing _hurt me anymore, not after the enormity of the pain I had already outlived and endured.

I opened my palm, catching his balled fist in mine, clenching it as though it were the very embodiment of everything in the world I despised, every bad break, every short-ended stick, every hurdle, every obstacle, every challenge I had failed to clear. I dug my fingers into his unprotected skin. My spine tingled with glee, with relief, with fulfillment.

But hatred alone would not be enough to win this battle.

Bugs' knee streaked into my stomach. I doubled over. He lifted me off my feet, threw my head over my heels, dropped my body to the floor like a stone. I landed flat on my back, hesitated, feeling clueless, frustrated, discouraged. For a split second, I feared that, in spite of everything, he might have still been stronger than I had envisioned—stronger than me, even now. I cursed my thoughts. They were cowardly, gutless, tentative, yet they only served to amplify my aggression, to heighten the effects of the adrenaline coursing through my veins.

I spun out of the way, his foot stamping the ground where my head had lain. I dove for the gun. My fingers closed around it, but not before Bugs could wrestle himself on top of me, diverting my aim away from him, to the wall. I pulled the trigger once out of desperation. Light flashed all around us, succeeded by rich purple smoke which filled the air with a noxious, metallic scent, sending fiery tears rolling down my cheeks. Bugs took me around the neck.

I relinquished my hold on the gun; it went off a second time as it clattered to the slick marble floor. Smoke again clouded my senses. I drove my elbow upwards, behind my head, made contact with my enemy's nose. Warm blood dribbled over my feathers. My resolve toughened; I struck again. The weight lifted off my shoulders, vanishing as Bugs was repelled backwards. I leapt to my feet, whirled around on my heels, faced his dark silhouette, the shimmering moonlight outlining his towering figure through the glinting panes of glass.

Lowering my head, I hurtled towards him, driving fearlessly into his chest, forearms raised. There was a loud _crack, _but the glass did not break. He let out a muffled groan, his breath spreading hotly over the back of my neck; he was hurt. I raised my fist, sent it flying into his jaw, cocked it back once more, repeated, certain that I had felt the bite of more tepid blood spattering against my knuckles. I reared back to strike again. His head dodged to the right. Unable to hold up, I punched a gaping, jagged hole in the glass. Long, deep gashes appeared over my feathers, peeling back the skin, glimmering, streaming red.

As I yanked my damaged hand free, the rabbit planted both paws squarely against my chest and shoved me away. I managed to retain my balance. My left eye focused on him: crumpled, ragged, injured, with thick shards of glass incising his back. There was no pity in my stare. I drew back my right leg, planted my other foot, channeled every vengeful, murderous, insolent, hate-filled thought in my mind, summoned every last illusory ounce of strength in my body, and lashed out at him with everything I had.

Lightning illuminated the room as the glass pane exploded. Bugs tumbled backwards, collapsing on top of a wide, cluttered desk—_his _desk—sending papers flying, blood spurting.

I refused to linger. I did not care whether he was alive, awake, unconscious, or dead. All I desired was to torture him, to exact more vengeance, to inflict more pain. I stalked towards him, the broken glass crackling like fire under my boots, and seized him by his collar, pulling his head up from the desk. He responded with only a faint, weakened gurgle, as if attempting to get a word out, but my ears were closed to his hollow excuses.

My knuckles slashed across his bloodied cheek and the back of his head again collided with the unforgiving desktop. Before he could react, I had yanked him back towards me and struck a second time, knocking one of his front teeth loose. There was something hypnotic, something magnetic, something intoxicating in the gruesome squelch which emerged from each solid punch, enticing me to continue, to repeat _ad nauseam_ until my own fist had turned sore and begun to bleed.

He reached for the switchblade in his pocket and I snatched it from him and flattened his ungloved hand against the surface of the desk and drove the dagger through his open palm. He screamed.

I doubled back over the glass, retrieved the gun and pressed the barrel to his temple.

Then he began to speak and I began to listen.

What good are you, he said slowly. What makes your life worth saving?

I had no answer.

There was blood everywhere, spitting from his mouth.

It isnt. It isnt worth saving, he grinned. It isnt worth shit. So why cant I fucking kill you?

I drew back the hammer, breathing into his face.

Do it, he said. Just fucking do it.

The gun hovered over his forehead for a long time. Then I dislodged the knife from his hand and hoisted him to his feet and dragged him to the window and shot out the window in a silvery livewire of glass that sparkled like confetti in the dim moonglow and shoved him through into the night. He did not scream, only vanished, tumbling, sucked away into that great void-like blackness. I heartell he met the ground all those stories below without a sound, without anything at all. He was simply gone.

After that I just stood there in the remnants of the window feeling the silence, the fading rain. Then I dropped the gun and turned and left the office.

The building was empty, cleared of all P M Cs. As I made my descent I could feel the wounds reopening inside of me. The weight of all that brass. Lungs filling up with fluid.

My feet dragged along behind me. Finally I collapsed in the stairwell and lay there barely breathing, my one eye seeing double and sometimes triple, strange colors coating the walls, wheeling around in a gyroscope of rapidly fading light.

I reached up and pulled the fire alarm and at once the sprinklerheads fizzed open, unleashing a torrent of freezing water that swam along the landing and shifted pinkly between my legs and disappeared down the stairs below.

What followed was mostly blackness, interrupted by flashes of plastic and metal and shining forceps and long bloody incisions. Air being forced into my lungs.

I woke up in a hospital bed—my third—staring vacantly at an old man in a houndstooth suit. He was already speaking, already midsentence.

You understand, he said.

I do? My voice was different now, somehow deeper, raspier, metal plates surgically affixed to my inner jaw.

Just listen, he said. Then he pulled his chair up a little closer and went on whispering: I've been following this case from the jump. What little intel we have I've pieced together. I know what happened. I know why you did what you did. And I dont want to see you in federal prison anymore than you do.

To be frank, I'm a fan, he said. And I'm offering you an out.

An out?

When Lola Bunny died, her daughter became an orphan. Give her a home, Daffy. Give her stability.

I dont understand, I said. I'm a killer.

You're an actor. Actors play parts. Some better than others. And in my estimation you've just turned in one of the greatest performances of our time.

I shook my head.

Would you like to see her? he asked.

I shook my head.

Well. It isnt your decision now is it?

She came in dressed all in black, brushing past the investigator on her way through the door. Pink ears bowed together with a strand of yellow ribbon. A necklace made of beads, a bracelet fitted with daisies. For a long time neither of us spoke. I could feel her eyes on me, but I couldn't meet them.

You didnt hurt her, she whispered at last.

I'm the reason she's dead.

You're the reason I'm still alive.

I wouldnt say that. I wouldnt ever say that.

He would've come for me. Sooner or later. You know he would've.

You're right, I said.

I have his genes in me.

Scary thought.

I have hers too. My mom's. That's how I know.

Know what?

That she trusted you.

She shouldnt have.

She did. And so do I.

I'm not your father.

You dont have to be.

What do you want?

To learn from you. And for you to learn from me.

Learn what?

That there's more to life than death.

* * *

Later that afternoon Babs and I were ushered hastily out of the hospital and stuffed into the back of an unmarked van and driven all the way to the edge of the city. It was dark and overcast and cold when we stepped out onto the sidewalk. From the curb we watched the van pack up, pull into traffic and zip away forever into obscurity.

Together we walked up the street, past a row of newspaper dispensers. The first issue read: Daffy Duck hospitalized. The second: Daffy Duck arrested in connection to killings. The third: Daffy Duck dead from injuries.

Babs stared up at me without a smile. Without anything at all.

What now? I asked.

Whatever suits you, she said.

_End of Sweet Phobia._


End file.
